U.S. 1 tourism effort afoot in Chesterfield

Sure, you can get your kicks on Route 66, but why bother when Route 1 is in your backyard?

That's a question that occurred recently to Scott Rogers.

Rogers has a passion for Jefferson Davis Highway. A Chesterfield County native and president of the Jefferson Davis Association, he runs a restaurant on U.S. 1 in Chester. Rogers' parents and friends passed on memories of Jeff Davis in its heyday -- the 1920s through'60s -- when Chester was a summer destination with cabins on a lake, a vibrant, thriving strip of motels, diners and neon lights.

Then Interstate 95 came along and stole all the fun.

Rogers wants it back.

. . .

Since its official opening in 1921, U.S. 1 has covered nearly 2,400 miles from the Canadian border to Key West, Fla., touching 14 states and the District of Columbia and hitting most major cities along the way.

"It's really an interesting drive because you get a little taste of everything -- cities, rural driving, small towns," Rogers said.

When Interstate 95 opened in the late 1950s, it left a trail of forgotten towns as traffic moved from the highway to the interstate and businesses followed. Chesterfield is a prime example, where large stretches of U.S. 1 steadily declined over the years.

"There's a lot of small towns either right on Route 1 or right off of Route 1 -- South Hill, for instance -- where the economy was thriving, there was a lot of traffic and everything was good. Then the interstate came open and everything moved to where the exits were and all the businesses in the small town went away," Rogers said.

Looking for ways to reverse the trend locally in his work with the Jefferson Davis Association, Rogers hit on something bigger a couple of years ago.

"We started researching a lot of the history along Jeff Davis and Chester and started to learn a lot about Route 1," he said. "We uncovered a lot of neat photographs and postcards and history."

That's when he decided tourism was the answer. "We came up with the idea of trying to market the highway like Route 66," he said.

In 2007, Rogers and the Jefferson Davis Association pitched the idea to local tourism officials.

Jack Berry, president and CEO of the Richmond Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau, loved it, joining the Jefferson Davis Association's history and tourism committee along with Dave Schulte, executive director for Petersburg Area Regional Tourism Corp.

"It's really unlimited; just a wonderful idea," Berry said. "There's such treasures -- so many themes. There's neon, diners, strip motels, funny little museums -- it's just filled with possibilities."

Last year Berry hired a firm to design a logo for the highway, and he's working with the Virginia Department of Transportation to adopt it for use along the roadway.

With a $25,000 grant he received last week from the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, Berry is having an interactive Web site created to take the project to the next level, inviting other states to get involved.

He says U.S. 1 has as much, if not more, potential than U.S. 66 -- the famous eight-state east-west stretch from Chicago to Los Angeles.

"A lot of East Coast people already use Route 1 to take their vacations. It's much more traveled than Route 66 ever was, and there's no tourism development on it," he said. "With the baby boomers coming into their traveling years, now is the time to develop a product."

. . .

But the idea is more than tourism for Rogers and the Jefferson Davis Association, who hope it will be a means to an end.

"It's an era of history that needs to start being documented and preserved," he said, adding that the effort would be a way of raising interest, and money, to clean up the stretches of highway that have gone neglected.

"Maybe in time we can have it declared a historic highway and ultimately be able to save some of the buildings," he said.

Rogers said block grant, stimulus and transportation funds would help the project, along with the assistance of Chesterfield's Economic Development, Transportation, and Parks and Recreation departments, and the Revitalization Office.

"It's a natural for this region," Schulte said. "There's a lot of history here, and we think there's an audience. This has the potential to shine the spotlight on some attractions that really are of a national scale." Schulte mentioned Pamplin Historical Park in Dinwiddie County, Petersburg National Battlefield, City Point in Hopewell and Henricus Historical Park in Chester as highlights.

Contact Wesley P. Hester at (804) 649-6976 or .