Except when the water level of the James is high, it is also reachable by foot from the southern shore via easy boulder-hopping.

From Belle Isle, one can see Hollywood Cemetery, the old Tredegar Iron Works, and Richmond City's skyline.

John L. Ransom, late First Sergeant Ninth Michigan Cavalry, published in 1881 his 'Andersonville Diary' which includes his account of life as a prisoner on Belle Isle during the winter of 1863-1864.

It is a cold, bleak piece of ground and the winter winds have free sweep from up the river.

He described the "great majority" of the patients as being: in a semi-state of nudity...laboring under such diseases as chronic diarrhoea, phthisis pulmonalis, scurvy, frost bites, general debility, caused by starvation, neglect and exposure.

Many of them had partially lost their reason, forgetting even the date of their capture, and everything connected with their antecedent history.

Belle Isle is briefly mentioned in Chapter III of MacKinlay Kantor's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the Civil War, "Andersonville" (1955).

The original Lee Bridge was built over the island in 1934 and replaced by the current version in 1988.

In the 2001 movie Hannibal, the power plant can be seen as Agent Starling runs across the bridge on the south side of the island.

Belle Isle offers Richmonders the opportunity to view wildlife in its natural habitat, at a location only a few minutes from the heart of the city.