[1] Although it was dismantled before the American Civil War after being supplanted by the steam-powered Richmond and Danville Railroad, several portions of the embankments for the roadbed are extant in Chesterfield County near present-day Midlothian Turnpike.

It was first commercially mined in the 1730s, and was used to make cannon at Westham (near the present Huguenot Memorial Bridge) during the American Revolutionary War.

Seeking a better method of transportation so that their markets could be expanded, in 1825, a group of mine owners, including Nicholas Mills, Beverly Randolph and Abraham S. Wooldridge, resolved to build a tramway.

In the winter of 1827, Claudius Crozet, Virginia's State Engineer, surveyed the proposed route and deemed it feasible for construction.

This feasibility study was necessary to obtain funding assistance from the Virginia Board of Public Works, a state agency which, beginning in 1816, invested in a portion of the stock of privately managed companies building canals, turnpikes, and, later, railroads.

By 1844, the Chesterfield Railroad had repaid the stockholders' entire original investment and consequently came under regulation of Virginia Board of Public Works, which adjusted charges to fix a dividend return of 6%.

In 1850, the new steam-driven Richmond and Danville Railroad began operation to Coalfield Station (later renamed Midlothian).

[5] Operating its entire lifetime without any locomotives, Chesterfield Railroads moved its railcars loaded with coal mostly by gravity downhill to the docks on the James River at the southern edge of Manchester.

At this location, a short portion of the former rail bed on a fill is still visible just south of the marker, between a retail center and a condominium complex.

An exhibit on local mining history in the Chesterfield Museum includes a length of iron rail from the incline railway, first in Virginia.