Historic Mountain Road: Discovering the Older Side of Glen Allen
Before interstates, shopping centers, and modern subdivisions transformed Glen Allen, Mountain Road was already connecting people, farms, schools, businesses, and communities across northern Henrico County.
Discovering Historic Mountain Road
Ask someone unfamiliar with Glen Allen what comes to mind when they think about the area, and you may hear about Short Pump, newer neighborhoods, shopping, restaurants, or convenient access to Interstate 295 and Interstate 95.
Drive along Mountain Road, however, and you'll discover another side of Glen Allen.
This is where historic taverns, old schools, farm properties, churches, museums, and community landmarks sit alongside modern neighborhoods and businesses.
Some are obvious.
Others are easy to drive past without giving them much thought.
But together, they tell an important part of the story of how Glen Allen developed from a largely rural community into the suburban area we know today.
And unlike visiting a single historic attraction, exploring Mountain Road allows you to see how those pieces fit together.
Historic Mountain Road at a Glance
FeatureInformationLocationNorthern Henrico County through the Glen Allen areaRoadMountain Road / Virginia Route 33CharacterHistoric corridor mixed with established and newer developmentNotable AttractionsMeadow Farm, Walkerton Tavern, Cultural Arts Center & Virginia Randolph MuseumHistory RepresentedAgriculture, transportation, education, African American history & community developmentTodayResidential neighborhoods, historic sites, parks, schools, churches & local businessesBest ForLocal history, architecture, exploring Glen Allen & understanding the area's development
Before Glen Allen Looked Like Glen Allen
It's easy to forget how dramatically this part of Henrico County has changed.
Long before Interstate 295 provided a quick trip across northern Henrico, and before subdivisions spread across much of Glen Allen, this was predominantly rural countryside.
Farms covered large portions of the landscape.
Small communities developed around roads, churches, schools, mills, stores, and transportation routes.
Mountain Road was one of the routes connecting them.
Today, you'll travel past traffic lights, neighborhoods, schools, businesses, and modern development.
But pieces of the earlier landscape remain.
You just have to know where to look.
Why Mountain Road Mattered
Roads played a very different role before automobiles and interstate highways.
A trip that takes 20 minutes today could once require hours.
Travelers needed places to stop.
Farmers needed routes to move goods.
Residents needed access to churches, schools, stores, mills, post offices, and neighboring communities.
Mountain Road became part of that network.
Its importance can still be seen in the historic properties that developed along or near the corridor.
A tavern served travelers.
Farms operated nearby.
Schools educated generations of children.
Churches became centers of community life.
Stores and post offices provided everyday services.
Over time, those individual places helped create the community that would become modern Glen Allen.
Walkerton Tavern: When Travelers Needed a Place to Stop
One of the clearest reminders of Mountain Road's early transportation history is Walkerton Tavern.
Constructed in 1825 for John Walker, Walkerton was positioned along Mountain Road to serve travelers moving through the area.
In the early 19th century, a tavern wasn't simply somewhere to get a drink.
Travelers could find:
Food
Overnight accommodations
Stabling for horses
Drinks
News and conversation
A place to conduct business
Walkerton later served other roles, including as a private residence, farm, store, post office, and voting precinct.
Today, the restored brick building sits beside the Cultural Arts Center.
It's easy to drive past in seconds.
But two centuries ago, stopping there could have been an important part of a much longer journey.
Meadow Farm: Remembering Glen Allen's Agricultural Past
Continue along Mountain Road and you'll encounter another very different piece of local history.
Meadow Farm Museum at Crump Park preserves a property whose history reaches back centuries.
The farmhouse dates to approximately 1810, and the surrounding property provides a reminder of the agricultural landscape that once dominated this part of Henrico County.
Today, visitors can explore the historic farm, see animals representing breeds associated with its agricultural past, visit exhibits, and then enjoy the surrounding Crump Park.
Meadow Farm also tells a much broader story than agriculture alone.
Henrico County's interpretation includes Native American history, the Sheppard family, enslaved African Americans who lived and worked on the property, the Parsons family, and the property's connection with Gabriel's Rebellion of 1800.
It's one of the places where the layers of Glen Allen's history become particularly visible.
The Cultural Arts Center: Giving an Old School a New Life
Not every historic building along Mountain Road became a museum.
Some found entirely new purposes.
The Cultural Arts Center at Glen Allen is one of the best examples.
The building began life as Glen Allen School in 1911.
For decades, generations of local students walked through its doors.
The school eventually closed in 1978, but the building wasn't lost.
Instead, it was transformed.
In 1999, the former school reopened as the Cultural Arts Center at Glen Allen.
Today, the approximately 50,300-square-foot facility includes:
A 350-seat theater
Art galleries
Classes and workshops
Live performances
Special events
Community programs
The building has changed dramatically from its school days, but its role as a place where the community gathers has continued.
That's an important theme along Mountain Road.
Many of these places have survived because they found ways to remain useful to the community around them.
Virginia Randolph: A Local Educator With a Much Larger Legacy
Farther along Mountain Road is one of the corridor's most nationally significant historic sites.
The Virginia Randolph Museum tells the story of Virginia Estelle Randolph, a pioneering African American educator whose career began in Henrico County.
In 1892, Randolph began teaching at the Mountain Road School, a one-room school for African American children.
Her approach went beyond traditional classroom instruction.
Randolph incorporated practical education, health, sanitation, gardening, cooking, sewing, woodworking, and improvements to the school environment.
Her work attracted attention and eventually became a model used by educators throughout the South.
The modest brick building housing today's museum was constructed in 1937 as a home economics cottage, and Randolph maintained an office there later in her life.
The building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1974.
That's an extraordinary piece of American educational history sitting along a road thousands of Glen Allen residents travel regularly.
Schools Have Long Been Part of the Mountain Road Story
The Cultural Arts Center and Virginia Randolph Museum reveal another important part of Mountain Road's history.
Education has deep roots here.
Glen Allen School served generations of local children.
Virginia Randolph began her groundbreaking educational work at the Mountain Road School.
Other schools and educational facilities developed as the population grew and Henrico County's school system changed.
That history reflects the development of Glen Allen itself.
As a rural population became a growing suburban community, its schools changed with it.
Some disappeared.
Some were replaced.
And a few buildings survived long enough to tell the story today.
Churches and Community Life
Historic churches also remain part of the landscape along and around Mountain Road.
Before shopping centers, recreation complexes, and modern community facilities existed, churches often served as far more than places of worship.
They were gathering places.
They hosted community events.
They connected neighbors.
And they became landmarks people used when describing where they lived.
Several long-established congregations remain in this part of Glen Allen today, providing another link between the modern community and generations that lived here before it.
It's another reason why exploring Mountain Road isn't simply about visiting a collection of museums.
The history is woven into places that are still being used every day.
Look Beyond the Historic Buildings
The story of Mountain Road isn't limited to properties with historic markers.
As you travel the corridor, look at the landscape itself.
You'll notice areas where development feels very different from newer parts of Glen Allen.
There are:
Older homes sitting closer to the road
Larger parcels of land
Established churches
Mature trees
Older commercial buildings
Historic properties mixed among newer development
Roads leading toward neighborhoods built decades apart
These transitions tell their own story.
Glen Allen didn't appear all at once.
It grew outward over generations.
Mountain Road lets you see pieces of those different eras sitting beside one another.
Glen Allen Before the Interstates
Perhaps one of the most interesting ways to think about Mountain Road is to imagine Glen Allen without the roads we now rely on.
No I-295.
No I-95 interchange carrying thousands of vehicles through northern Henrico.
No Broad Street commercial corridor as we know it today.
No quick drive to Short Pump Town Center.
Local roads mattered much more.
Mountain Road connected people with neighboring communities, farms, schools, churches, businesses, and routes leading toward Richmond and beyond.
Modern transportation eventually changed how people moved through Glen Allen.
But Mountain Road remained.
And the development that followed simply grew around it.
Mountain Road Today
Mountain Road is no longer a quiet rural route.
Today it passes through an area that includes:
Established neighborhoods
Newer residential communities
Schools
Parks
Restaurants
Local businesses
Medical services
Churches
Historic properties
Recreation facilities
That's what makes the corridor particularly interesting.
You don't have to visit a preserved historic district where everything has been frozen in time.
Instead, you're seeing old Glen Allen and modern Glen Allen occupying the same landscape.
A historic tavern sits beside an arts center.
An early-19th-century farmhouse shares property with a modern public park.
A National Historic Landmark sits along a road used by commuters every day.
History isn't separated from the community here.
It's mixed right into it.
Create Your Own Mountain Road History Drive
One easy way to experience this part of Glen Allen is to create your own informal history tour.
A few places worth including are:
Virginia Randolph Museum
2200 Mountain Road
Learn about Virginia Estelle Randolph and the educational movement that grew from her work in Henrico County.
The Cultural Arts Center at Glen Allen
2880 Mountain Road
Explore the former Glen Allen School, browse rotating art exhibitions, or attend a performance in the Center's theater.
Walkerton Tavern
2892 Mountain Road
Step back to the days when Mountain Road carried travelers who needed food, lodging, and stabling for their horses.
Meadow Farm Museum & Crump Park
3400 Mountain Road
Explore Glen Allen's agricultural past, visit the historic farmhouse and farm animals, then spend some time walking through Crump Park.
You don't necessarily need to visit all four in one day.
In fact, we've explored each of these places individually in this series because every one deserves more attention than a quick stop on a driving tour.
But seeing where they sit in relation to one another helps reveal something important:
A remarkable amount of Glen Allen's history survives within just a few miles of Mountain Road.
Why Historic Mountain Road Is Worth Exploring
Mountain Road isn't an attraction in the traditional sense.
There's no entrance gate.
No ticket booth.
No single place where you arrive and say, "We're here."
Instead, the attraction is the story unfolding along the road.
It's understanding that the brick tavern you're passing welcomed travelers 200 years ago.
It's knowing that the arts center was once filled with Glen Allen schoolchildren.
It's recognizing that a small museum marks the work of an educator whose influence spread across the South.
It's seeing Meadow Farm and remembering that much of Glen Allen once looked more like farmland than suburbia.
Once you know those stories, Mountain Road becomes more than simply another way to get across Glen Allen.
Discovering the Glen Allen That Was Here Before Us
One of the reasons we started this series was to get beyond the obvious attractions and explore places people sometimes overlook or forget about.
Mountain Road may be the best example yet.
There's nothing hidden about the road itself.
People drive it every day.
What's hidden is the history surrounding them while they do it.
Glen Allen continues to grow and change, just as it has for generations.
New neighborhoods will be built.
Businesses will come and go.
Roads will change.
But scattered among all of that growth are places that help us understand what came before.
Sometimes discovering a community doesn't mean finding somewhere you've never been.
Sometimes it means traveling a familiar road and finally knowing what you're looking at.
Thinking About Moving to Glen Allen?
If you're considering a move to Glen Allen, exploring places like historic Mountain Road can help you understand how varied this community really is.
Glen Allen includes newer master-planned communities, established neighborhoods, historic areas, parks, shopping, recreation, and quieter residential pockets — often within only a few miles of one another.
As a local REALTOR® with Long & Foster Real Estate, I help buyers and sellers navigate Glen Allen and the surrounding Richmond communities with local knowledge, market insight, and personalized service.
If you'd like to learn more about living in Glen Allen, explore its different neighborhoods, or discuss buying or selling a home in the Richmond area, I'd be happy to help.
Matthew Cooper, REALTOR®
Long & Foster Real Estate – Grove Ave Office
Serving Glen Allen, Henrico County, and the Greater Richmond Region
