Quoit Club: Belle Isle: POSTPONED!!!

September 8, 2021

Due to the flash flood state of emergency, Quoit Club: Belle Isle is POSTPONED!

We will now tour Belle Isle on WEDNESDAY, September 22nd!

New Date! Wednesday, September 22, 2021.
6:00 p.m.
Members-Only Tour | Click Here to buy a membership

Walk with us on Belle Isle Thursday, September 16, 2021. This members-only tour will be guided by James River Park System’s Bryce Wilk, Senior Superintendent of the South District of Parks, and Ryan Rinn, Economic Development Business Services Manager for Parks and Recreation, who will take us around Belle Isle, talking about its history and future of the site!

Brief History of Belle Isle:

Belle Isle is an island in the middle of the James River in downtown Richmond. William Byrd I acquired the island in 1676, and it remained in the Byrd family for a century.

​Belle Isle has been the site of a number of industrial operations beginning with a nail factory in 1814 and a mill in the same decade. Belle Isle Manufacturing Company built the Richmond area’s first chartered rolling and puddling mills on the island in the 1840’s producing nails, bar iron, boilerplate, and other works of iron. This company became the Old Dominion Iron & Nail Works, which by 1860 was one of the premier nail manufacturers in the country and still occupied the island as late as 1910. The remains of a historic iron foundry are still visible.

​During the Civil War, the island was home to the Confederacy’s largest military prison, which housed captured Union prisoners in tents surrounded by a stockade. At its maximum capacity in 1863, the prison held 10,000 Union soldiers, with tents for only 3,000. With no barracks for the prisoners, exposure to the elements was a large factor in what would prove to be a staggering death toll on the island.

​The island’s granite offered ready material for the operation of stone crushing plants. A former quarry is still accessible on the north side of the island, not far from the James River’s Hollywood Rapids. The shell of an early 20th century hydroelectric plant stands on the south side of the island, visible from the footbridge to the south bank of James River Park. Operated by the Virginia Railway and Power company, in 1905 it was used to generate electric power for Richmond’s streetcar system, the first of its kind in the nation.
(Source: National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior)