Quarter Horses for Sale in Spotsylvania VA, Goochland VA

About Ashland, VA

The Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad initially developed the town in the 1840s as a mineral springs resort with a racetrack. The town was named "Ashland" after native son Henry Clay's estate in Kentucky and was officially incorporated on February 19, 1858. The area had been known as "The Slashes", sometimes translated as "swamp", but which also reflected the small ravines that formed in the sandy clay soil after hard rains. Confederate troops trained on the former racetrack early in the American Civil War, but the war and its aftermath devastated Ashland. Randolph–Macon College (founded 1830) moved to Ashland in 1868 and began using buildings of the bankrupt hotel as well as building additional structures.