Port of Richmond (Virginia)
Shipping port in Richmond, Virginia, United States of America
The Port of Richmond, also known as the Richmond Deepwater Terminal and the Richmond Marine Terminal, is located on the James River in Richmond, Virginia, United States, 100 miles (160 km) inland from Cape Henry and approximately 78 miles (126 km) northwest of Newport News, Virginia. It is located at 77° 25' west longitude and 37° 27' north latitude, lies adjacent to Interstate 95, and is 4 miles (6 km) south of downtown Richmond. Richmond is the western terminus for commercial navigation on the James River, due to the Fall Line.
The port is operated and leased by the Virginia Port Authority.
History
Richmond had an extensive history as a port city; the city formed at its current location as the Fall Line prevents further navigation up the James River. The Chesapeake & Ohio (C&O) Railway saw Richmond as a prime location to export coal. To support this, the company built a tunnel under Church Hill, and operations began to the port in 1873. However, changing shipping technologies meant that larger ships were more economical, and the failure to materialize of a proposed James River dredging project caused the owner of the C&O, Collis Huntington, to extend the tracks 74 miles east to Newport News for a direct connection with the port there. Operations in the tunnel ceased in 1902 after completion of a new, more direct, viaduct. In 1925, it collapsed and was sealed off.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7231249. Authority coordinates are 37.457, -77.422. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1873, 1902 and 1925.
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This entry incorporates text from “Port of Richmond (Virginia)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.