Chimborazo Park is a park and historic land site in Richmond, Virginia, United States. Created in 1874, the park was the site of Chimborazo Hospital, one of the world's largest military hospitals.Historic Richmond website
Name The name Chimborazo comes from a volcano in Ecuador. It is believed that the Richmond hill was dubbed Chimborazo around 1802, the year of Alexander von Humboldt’s unsuccessful attempt to scale the mountain in Ecuador.National Register of Historic Places Registration Form for Oakwood-Chimborazo Historic District, p. 13 . Chimborazo Hill was one of Richmond's "seven hills"Dabney, Virginius, Richmond: The Story of a City (1990), p. 221. and thought to have been so named by a local world-traveler because of its topographical likeness to the Ecuadorian volcano.Johns, Frank S. and Anne Page Johns, Chimborazo Hospital and J. B. McCaw, Surgeon-in-Chief, The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 62, No. 2 (Apr., 1954), page 192. A brewery had dug cellars in the Richmond hill to store beer. At the top of the cellars was a hole that acted as a chimney. A Richmond newspaper reported that any fire in the cellar would cause "billows of smoke [to come] through making the hill look like a miniature Vesuvius."Green, Carol C., Chimborazo: The Confederacy's Largest Hospital (2007), page 8. Documentation regarding a brewery on Chimborazo Hill is difficult to find though there are references to "Chimborazo Brewery" and "Chimborazo Hill Brewery" in the 1850s: Schuricht, Herrmann, History of The German Element in Virginia, Volume II (1900), p. 36 and Mehrlander, Andrea, The Germans of Charleston, Richmond and New Orleans During the Civil War Period, 1850-1870: A Study and Research Compendium (2011), p. 62.
Shortly after being suggested as the location for the state Capitol building in 1780,Richmond Times-Dispatch, January 9, 2016, the hill (while unclear as to whether it was yet named Chimborazo) was the assemblage place for a "couple of hundred raw, poorly equipped militia, who were hurriedly corralled and drawn up" to protect Richmond when Benedict Arnold and British troops converged on the city in January, 1781. "When the militia saw what was coming, they decided to a man, to live to fight another day, and skedaddled".Stanard, Mary Newton, Richmond: Its People and Its Story (1923), page 40.
Toward the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century, Chimborazo Heights was said to have been a "favorite dueling ground" and "several lives were thus sacrificed there."Brock, R.A., Richmond as a Manufacturing and Trading Centre (1880), p.30. Before the war, it was "a common, chiefly occupied by grazing cows and ball-playing, kite-flying boys, and not unfrequently the scene of hard-fought rock-battles between the "Hill boys" and the "Butchertown cats."The Daily Dispatch, April 25, 1871, page 1, column 5.
Prior to its use as a hospital during the Civil War, the hill had been used to organize the troops coming into Richmond.Green, Carol C., Chimborazo: The Confederacy's Largest Hospital (2007), pages 7-8. When the war started, several large regiments camped on and around Chimborazo Hill and built extensive wooden barracks for shelter. As these soldiers went off to the front lines, they left behind as many as 100 nearly-new wooden buildings which were commandeered by Samuel P. Moore, the Surgeon General of the Confederate States of America for the establishment of a hospital.National Park Service: Chimborazo Hospital. At the time the hospital was established, aside from the barracks constructed by the soldiers, only two buildings were located on the hill: a large house owned by Richard Laughton and a small office building.Green, Carol C., Chimborazo: The Confederacy's Largest Hospital (2007), pages 7-8. A Richard H. Laughton is listed in the 1850 United States Census living in Henrico County. See 1850 Federal Census
On maps pre-dating the Civil War, "Chimborazo Hill" is shown located in Henrico County just to the east of the city line.Map of Richmond, Ellyson, 1856. That portion of Henrico County containing Chimborazo Hill was annexed by Richmond in 1867.Map Showing Territorial Growth of Richmond, Department of Public Works, 1923.
Chimborazo Hospital
Chimborazo Hospital was a Civil War-era facility built in Richmond, Virginia, to serve the Confederate Army. It functioned between 1862 and 1865, treating over 76,000 wounded Confederate soldiers. It achieved a 9 percent mortality rate. The site is now owned by the National Park Service and is used as a visitor center for Richmond National Battlefield Park.nps.gov Paragraph 5.
On the south side of the park, overlooking the James River, is a stone commemorating the hospital; it was placed by the Confederate Memorial Literary Society in 1934. The stone is appropriately sited, overlooking the Confederate Navy Yard on the James River and riverside Rocketts Landing.Richmond's Post-Industrial East End, University of Virginia Community History Project, 2011, p. 71
A bronze plaque on the stone reads as follows:
On this hill stoodChimborazo Hospital1862-1865
Established by Surgeon General S.P. Moore, C.S.A. Directed by Dr. James B. McCaw.
At that time, it was the largest military hospital in the world. It consisted of 150 buildings and 100 tents and cared for 76,000 patients with a mortality of less than 10 per cent.
This tablet is placed by theConfederate Memorial Literary Society1934
Freedmen's Community (1865-1866)
After the end of the Civil War, what was once the largest Confederate hospital in the country became the site of a refuge camp for former slaves, managed by the Freedmen's Bureau. Many of the buildings were used briefly as a day school while other buildings were torn down and the wood used for construction or firewood. The community, however, did not last long as the refuge camp was closed soon after it opened. In March, 1866, the Freedmen's Bureau ordered all able-bodied men to vacate their lodgings in the park by April 1.The Daily Dispatch, March 24, 1866, page 1, column 3. Over time, the City of Richmond purchased the land piece by piece, in many cases using public condemnation, slowly removing the freedmen's community from Chimborazo Hill. The city council auctioned off the last remaining wooden houses in 1880, removing all traces of the previous community to make way for Chimborazo Park. The last of the structures disappeared around 1900.Richmond's Post-Industrial East End, University of Virginia Community History Project, 2011, p. 43Chimborazo Hospital.
Formation of Chimborazo Park
On October 26, 1874, Richmond's Board of Alderman took up a resolution to purchase 35 acres on Richmond's Chimborazo Hill at a cost of $35,000. A report prepared by the Committee on Public Grounds and Buildings noted the importance of public parks:
The opening and improvement of small squares in different parts of the city is not a mere question of ornament and improvement to taxable property, beautifying the city at the same time of increasing its taxable wealth, but is a question of great public benefit – a real health measure, conferring a blessing on the humblest and poorest citizens, while it adds largely to the material prosperity of our whole people. With a densely crowded population, these open spaces will in time prove to be of inestimable value to the city.
A public park is simply an expanded idea of our small squares – "sanitarians" as they are sometimes called. It is the cherished work of every city with any claim to progress and comfort, and is as much the index of material prosperity as it is of the cultivated taste and refinement of an enlightened people. The report urges an immediate step to secure grounds for a park as an economical measure and investment by the city, as the extensions of our water-works are threatened to be hemmed in with factories and sewers if the city does not secure the ground along our river front with a reasonable distance of the works. The extension of these works must require additional ground, and in providing for a park we can accomplish the two ideas together. This combination of water-works and park grounds is the example of all large cities, and in carrying this out we shall be simply repeating what others have done, with the benefit of all their experiences.
The Committee recommended the issuance of bonds for the purchase of the land and that annual funds be set aside for its upkeep. The resolution was adopted by the Board of Alderman on November 10, 1874.The Richmond Whig, October 27, 1874, page 3, The Richmond Whig, November 10, 1874, page 3, Source: GenealogyBank.com.
One of the earliest descriptions of the park was made in The Daily Dispatch, a local Richmond newspaper, covering the maiden round-trip voyage of the steamer The City of Richmond between Richmond and Norfolk on August 27, 1880. The ongoing construction of the park was referenced as “changing it from an eyesore to a thing of beauty – to be a joy forever, in particular for those who approach Richmond by water. From its prominence – towering high above all other hills – it deserves to be handsomely improved. First appearances are everything with the traveler. If he is disgusted with a city upon entering it, afterwards it is difficult to make him see any good in it.” The newspaper proclaimed that once the plans for Chimborazo Park, as well as Libby Hill Park, “are carried out in full, Richmond will present to the stranger who enters her gates by James River a face of unusual charms.”The Daily Dispatch, August 28, 1880, page 1, column 4.
While referred to before its establishment as a park as "naturally picturesque, though at present very unattractive",The Daily Dispatch, April 25, 1871, page 1, column 5. local newspapers would soon describe the beauty and serenity of the new park. In 1886, it was described as "once occupied by a crowd which made night hideous, is now as lovely a spot as can be found."The Richmond Dispatch, April 8, 1886, page 4, column 3. In later years, it was described as "a park equal in beauty of elevation and perspective to any certainly in this part of the country" (1887),The Richmond Dispatch, March 2, 1887, page 1, column 6. a "place of popular resort" (1897)Richmond Dispatch, June 30, 1896, page 8, column 3. and "a beautiful and elevated plateau, having a magnificent view of the river for twelve or fourteen miles" (1900).The Times, December 2, 1900, page 7, column 2. Referring to its height, it was once called "the frowning Gibralter of the range".Richmond, Virginia, The Chamber of Commerce Book, (1895), p. 14.
During its early phases of development, the neighborhood around Chimborazo Park was advertised as a Suburban Resort, a green landscape offering residents open spaces in which to enjoy fresh air, exercise, participate in various social activities, and admire majestic views of the James River. To draw residents to the park, the city extended a streetcar line to Chimborazo Park in the late 19th century. City officials believed the park would reduce social unrest, increase the physical and mental health of its citizens, provide appropriate spaces for recreation, and provide green buffers between industrialized regions and residential districts.Richmond's Post-Industrial East End, University of Virginia Community History Project, 2011, p. 51
Over the years, several monuments have been placed in the park to memorialize the city's past. Because of its "conspicuous height" and "commanding position", the park was even suggested as the appropriate location for monuments to Jefferson DavisThe Richmond Dispatch, November 8, 1891, page 7, column 4 and Robert E. Lee.The Richmond Dispatch, March 28, 1886, page 5, column 3 as well as a monument to the women of the Confederacy.Richmond Dispatch, July 2, 1891, page 2, column 1. It was also once suggested as the site for a city trotting park.Richmond Dispatch, April 28, 1888, page 1, column 5.