The Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society

Collecting, preserving, and interpreting the history of our community!

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This view looks south across the Belmont Bridge during the 1951 Apple Harvest Parade, an autumn tradition that had begun the year before and which became the springtime Dogwood Festival in 1958. This bridge was built in 1905, connecting the east end of downtown Charlottesville over the Chesapeake & Ohio railroad tracks to the fast-growing Belmont neighborhood— a planned community named for the sprawling, 550-plus-acre Belle-Mont estate that had occupied that area throughout the 19th century. The c.1800 Belle-Mont manor house survives today as an apartment building. In 1891 developers with the Belmont Land Company began selling parcels in the area for home sites and businesses. The growing neighborhood was linked to Downtown, West Main, the University and Fry’s Spring by a network of electric trolley cars (decommissioned in 1935 and initially replaced by four buses). In 1961 a new four-lane highway bridge was installed to replace the original. A third iteration of the Belmont Bridge is planned. Photo by Ed Roseberry (b. 1925).

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