Jordan Pascale
Twelve miles of Route 1 in Prince William County will officially be renamed from Jefferson Davis Highway to Richmond Highway, a change reflecting a renewed push to confront the Commonwealth’s Confederate past.
The Virginia Commonwealth Transportation Board approved the name change during a meeting Tuesday.
Prince William County Supervisor Andrea Bailey, who is Black, spoke in support of the measure before the unanimous vote to approve the name change.
“It’s something that is well past time and past due,” Bailey said. “The highway’s current name is a symbol of division throughout our communities and it’s a consistent reminder of our nation’s dark and hurtful past.
“And we want to move on by renaming Jefferson Davis Highway, we will send a strong message of diversity and inclusion and forward progress within our community.”
The actual signs won’t be changed until July 2022 as the county goes through a process to engage with businesses and the community, update records and more, according to an FAQ posted by the county. It affects about 940 addresses.
County officials estimate the cost will be about $1.2 million, which includes creating and installing the signs, and the staffing to update records and work with the public.
Prince William County decided to pick Richmond Highway to maintain consistency with the segments of Route 1 to the north, and to reduce confusion for people who use the road.
The City of Alexandria, Arlington and Fairfax counties already renamed their portions of Route 1 to Richmond Highway in recent years. In total, 35 miles of the road in Northern Virginia have been renamed.
Most of the route through the rest of the state still is named Jefferson Davis Highway.
Arlington said it cost about $17,000 and took about three and a half months to replace the signs after it got the transportation board’s approval in May 2019.
Prince William County’s Board of Supervisors approved a resolution asking for the name change in September. The state’s transportation board must approve all name changes for state roads.
In 1922, the Virginia General Assembly designated Route 1 as Jefferson Davis Highway at the request of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. It was a direct response to the cross-country Lincoln Highway, constructed years earlier.
In 2015, localities across the country reexamined the names on their schools, roads and other public buildings after a white supremacist, who had posed with Confederate flags, shot and killed African American parishioners in a South Carolina church.
It set off a wave of reckoning about the country’s Confederate past and the current display of monuments and named tributes to the Confederacy.
On Monday, Alexandria’s school board replaced the names of two Confederates on its schools.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which has been tracking the removal of Confederate symbols, says Virginia has removed at least a dozen symbols in 2020. The state had 226 Confederate symbols in 2019, according to the SLPC’s “Whose Heritage” project.
