modern "post" windmill built at Flowerdew Hundred, for show rather than function
The human muscles of Native Americans were the energy source for hunting, fishing, and farming in Virginia for thousands of years. After the Europeans arrived 400 years ago... human muscles remained the primary source of energy for farming. Indentured servants, small farmers working their own fields, and of course slaves on the larger plantations cleared the land, then planted, weeded, and harvested crops by hand. If tobacco growing had not been energy-intensive, or if energy-saving technology such as modern John Deere tractors had been available in the 1600's, there would have been far less economic justification for importing slaves to Virginia.
For transportation, Native Americans in Virginia used their muscles. They hauled items such as deer meat or skins on their backs, without the use of domesticated horses or even the wheel. The muscles of the Native Americans were strong enough for paddling canoes substantial distances, including across the Chesapeake Bay to the Eastern Shore. Those canoes were not streamlined, so the effort required to paddle canoes loaded with grain and people must have been tiresome. However, the tribes lacked the knowledge for using wind power and sailing against the current.
Windpower was the energy source for European ships that sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to reach colonial Virginia. Early European visitors and colonists relied upon windpower for transportation - sailing was far easier than paddling or rowing. The Europeans developed sailing technology and discovered the "New World" before the North Americans figured out how to sail to Europe. (Today, nearly all commercial ships are fueled by petroleum rather than wind.)
The European colonists also used the wind to power some manufacturing facilities. The first windmill in Virginia was built near modern-day Hopewell at Flowerdew Hundred, after that plantation was purchased by Abraham Peirsey and renamed Piersey's Hundred. Windmills also provided the energy for grinding the grain at Norfolk that fed the bakeries, which produced the flour and bread purchased by the ships that docked there. (You won't find a lot of hills or waterfalls at Norfolk, so windpower was more available than waterpower...)
The easiest way to get warm is to stand in the sun - but sunlight is not available 24 hours per day. Native Americans used firewood as their primary energy source for heating their dwellings and cooking food, and for heating mud to make pottery. Firewood was also a fundamental energy source of energy for colonial manufacturing started by the Europeans. From the early glass factory at Jamestown to the iron furnaces of William Spottswood and Augustine Washington, the initial manufacturing facilities in the colony took advantage of the chemical energy in Virginia's extensive fuelwood resources.
Cutting and hauling firewood is burdensome, of course. Where possible, the European colonists tried to use waterpower, obtaining the mechanical energy in falling water to turn wheels that ground grain, sawed wood, or stamped iron. Streams were diverted into millponds for storage, and water was delivered to the large wheels at the mills through artificial channels called millraces. The water from the millrace was controlled, so the wheels would turn when the energy was needed to grind grain (corn or wheat) and limestone (plaster), or to power a saw to cut tree trunks into lumber. A well-balanced waterwheel could power grinding stones and saws with the energy from just a small amount of water, perhaps no more than what we run today in the sink when we brush our teeth.
By the mid-1700's, mills were grinding corn and wheat on streams throughout Virginia, and cities began to emerge on the Fall Line. Topography shaped the location of these facilities - since falling water was the essential ingredient, mills were located adjacent to a stream. A mill located too close to a stream might be swept away in a flood, so millers built on nearby flat spots and dug channels ("mill races") from streams to their mills. "Merchant mills" ground grain for other farmers, but large farms also built private mills that served just one landowner. Merchant mills became a central gathering point for their community, with well-traveled roads leading to each facility.
To ensure sufficient water during dry spells, millers also built dams across streams or dug ponds. Query the Geographic Names Information Server for Virginia places with "mill" in the name, and you'll find hundreds of locations...
The textile industry in New England developed along the waterfalls of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. After the Civil War the industry moved south to take advantage of the low-cost labor as well as the reduced shipping costs for the main raw material, cotton. Look at the location of the textile production centers of Virginia in the last century (before textile manufacturing moved again at the end of the 20th Century to lower-cost areas such as Mexico, Southeast Asia, and China) - Petersburg, Danville, even Fries. These towns were on rivers where waterpower could be used to spin the spindles to manufacture threads and cloth.
Starting in 1748, coal was mined in the Triassic basin southwest of Richmond. However, coal remained a minor energy source in Virginia until after the Civil War. Over the next century, factories in Richmond did not migrate to the coal fields south of the city at Midlothian, or west of the city above the Fall Line. Factories continued to be concentrated at the Fall Line, and coal was shipped to the factories.
The earliest Virginia locomotives used firewood as their energy source, until after the Civil War. Railroads were finally built into the coalfields of Tazewell County and the Appalachian Plateau in the 1880's, after Northern industrialists figured out how to invest in Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky. The improved transportation finally stimulated large-scale commercialization of the coal resource, and the coal-fired steam locomotive dominated American railroads until diesels were adopted in the 1950's.
In the early 20th Century, cities on the Fall Line built dams (including Embrey Dam on the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg). They harnessed the same waterpower that had turned waterwheels, and used turbines to convert mechanical energy into electrical energy. Waterpower remained a key energy source, with Fall Line power plants generating electricity.
However, the electrical transmission lines enabled a dramatic increase in flexibility for locating the facilities that used the electricity. No longer was it necessary to locate a factory next to the energy source, or even near a railroad that delivered coal. "Power-by-wire" can be transported to locations away from the waterfalls on the rivers, and even away from the cities. Once electricity reached rural areas in the mid-1900's, companies could feel confident they would have access to energy if they locate facilities in virtually any part of Virginia.
Richmond was the first city in the US to have electric streetcars - in 1888, using electricity created by a hydropower plant. Industrial facilities did not convert immediately to electricity, however. Factory owners had to amortize their investments in existing facilities before investing in new factories that could take advantage of new technology.
Existing factories slowly converted to use electricity, replacing complicated belt-and-pulley systems that once dictated where equipment could be located. Productivity increased especially fast as new factories were built, facilities designed to take advantage of the new flexibility where motors in the electrical equipment meant it could be moved anywhere in the building. Power lines snaked through the industrial sections of different cities, greatly expanding the number of parcels where a factory was now a cost-effective investment... and lowering the costs in the process.
Today, energy is still generated by fuelwood in living room fireplaces and campfires on camping trips. Historic mills, such as Mabry Mill on the Blue Ridge Parkway and Colvin Run Mill in
Fairfax County, use waterpower to grind grain. Hydroelectric plants of much-improved design still generate electricity from falling water. But three other sources supply the majority of energy
to Virginians today - coal and nuclear power for electricity, and petroleum for the energy that powers our transportation system.
Major coal production in Virginia started with the opening of the Pocahontas Mine in Tazewell County. Demand was so obvious that coal was produced and stockpiled in advance of the extension of the railroad to reach the mine.
Wherever coal was produced on the Appalachian Plateau, the economy in isolated valleys was transformed from subsistence farming to a cash economy based on production at the mine. When the local labor force was fully employed, the mining companies imported new groups of laborers and built company towns in the hills, such as Clinchco in Dickenson County.
