Chatham, Altavista, and Hurt: three towns, three different beginnings

Courthouse and railway beginnings

The towns around Gretna reward individual attention. Chatham, Altavista, and Hurt share a regional setting, but their documented histories follow different paths.

A courthouse, a planned industrial community, and a town incorporated in the twentieth century provide three useful starting points for exploring the corridor.

In Chatham, the Pittsylvania County Courthouse was completed in 1853 by regional builder L.A. Shumaker.

Its significance reaches beyond architecture. Virginia DHR identifies it as a landmark in the African American struggle for civil rights after the Civil War.

Judge J.D. Coles’s exclusion of Black residents from jury service in 1878 led to Ex parte Virginia.

The Supreme Court held that his actions violated federal civil-rights law and the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal-protection guarantee. The courthouse remains an active county building, so visitors should use county guidance for access.

Hurt and the Route 29 corridor

Altavista’s beginnings were closely tied to a railway project. The town’s official history dates the idea to 1905, when three Lane brothers, who were building part of the Virginian Railway, purchased 2,000 acres in Campbell County.

Engineers laid out streets and lots with utilities, and free lots encouraged settlement. Incorporation followed in 1912.

The same year saw the formation of the Lane Company, which developed from box manufacturing into the cedar-chest business associated with the town.

Hurt’s official account places its incorporation in 1967 and identifies John L. Hurt Jr., a local attorney and landowner, as the person for whom the town is named.

That later incorporation date is a reminder that a community’s history and its legal status as a town are different things. Treat Hurt as a place with its own identity when exploring the Staunton River area.

For an outdoor extension near Altavista, the town operates Dalton’s Landing Canoe Launch at 5552 Bedford Highway in Lynch Station, about seven miles outside town. It is intended for self-propelled craft, opens from sunrise to sunset, and does not permit overnight parking or camping.

Check the town’s current access information before planning a river trip. These town and landscape histories work best when each place has room to tell its own story.