Hills & Heights
Richmond Mag Explores Stratford Hills
One of the Hills in Hills and Heights is profiled by Richmond Magazine
Stratford Hills resident Maureen Egan takes a long look at her neighborhood. It is a great area and one fact she drops that I never knew is that there used to be a 9-hole golf course in the area. Hello, future rabbit-hole. I hope to find out more about that course in the future.
The one fact that everyone knows about Stratford Hills is that nature and the outdoors reign supreme.
Even the pleasures of the four sections of the James River Park System within Stratford Hills, with their multiuse trails, rapids, rocks and access for fishing, tubing, rafting and kayaking, would never have been available to residents and visitors without a fight. In the 1960s, the Richmond Metropolitan Authority planned an expressway for the southern bank of the river, where today you’ll find The Wetlands, Pony Pasture, The Meadows and Huguenot Flatwater, as well as Riverside Drive. Thankfully, environmental activist Louise Burke, who moved to Stratford Hills from Oregon with her family in 1958, formed the Scenic James Council with other concerned citizens and fought the expressway, even corralling her Girl Scout troop for a “Farewell to the River” tour and inviting a newspaper reporter to come along.
