[6] Explorer John Lederer visited one of the Siouan villages (Saponi) in 1670, on the Staunton River at Otter Creek, southwest of the present-day city, as did the Thomas Batts and Robert Fallam expedition in 1671.

At the Treaty of Albany in 1718, the Iroquois Five Nations ceded control of their land east of the Blue Ridge Mountains, including Lynchburg, to the Colony of Virginia; they confirmed this in 1721.

[7] When about 17 years old, Lynch started a ferry service at a ford across the James River to carry traffic to and from New London, where his parents had settled.

[citation needed] In 1786, Virginia's General Assembly recognized Lynchburg, the settlement by Lynch's Ferry on the James River.

Shallow-draft James River bateau provided a relatively easy means of transportation through Lynchburg down to Richmond and eventually to the Atlantic Ocean.

Eventually the state built a canal and towpath along the river to make transportation by the waterway easier, and especially to provide a water route around the falls at Richmond, which prevented through navigation by boat.

By 1812, U.S. Chief Justice John Marshall, who lived in Richmond, reported on the navigation difficulties and construction problems on the canal and towpath.

[9] To avoid the many visitors at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson in 1806 developed a plantation and house near Lynchburg, called Poplar Forest.

Union General Philip Sheridan appeared headed for Lynchburg on June 10, as he crossed the Chickahominy River and cut the Virginia Central Railroad.

Narcissa Owen (Cherokee), wife of the president of the Lynchburg and Tennessee Railroad, later wrote about her similar deception of Union spies.

Governor William Smith and the Commonwealth's executive and legislative branches escaped to Lynchburg as Richmond surrendered on April 3.

Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, roughly 20-mile (32 km) east of Lynchburg, ending the Civil War.

He was a native of nearby Campbell County and descendant of John Lynch; he had been wounded on April 6 at High Bridge during that Appomattox campaign.

Shortly thereafter Dr. Charles Browne Fleet, a physician and pharmacological tinkerer, introduced the first micro-enema to be mass marketed over the counter.

During the 2018–19 school year, the college's name was changed to the University of Lynchburg, reflecting its expansion of graduate-level programs and research.

In the late 1950s, interested citizens, including Virginia Senator Mosby G. Perrow Jr., asked the federal government to change its long-planned route for the interstate highway, now known as I-64, between Clifton Forge and Richmond.

[20] Since the 1940s, maps of the federal interstate highway system showed a proposed northern route, bypassing the manufacturing centers at Lynchburg and Roanoke.

An estimated 8,300 Virginians were relocated to Lynchburg and sterilized there, making the city a "dumping ground" of sorts for the feeble-minded, poor, blind, epileptic, and those otherwise seen as genetically "unfit".

Later in the late 1970s, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a class-action lawsuit against the state of Virginia on behalf of the sterilization victims.

[citation needed] The Manic Street Preachers address the issue in their song "Virginia State Epileptic Colony" on their 2009 album Journal for Plague Lovers.

[31] Downtown Lynchburg has undergone significant revitalization, with hundreds of new loft apartments created through adaptive reuse of historic warehouses and mills.

A diversity of small businesses with the region has helped maintain a stable economy and has minimized the impacts of nation-wide economic downturns.

This predates the influence of Liberty University; it was one of the first areas of the state where the old-line Byrd Democrats began splitting their tickets at the national level in the 1950s.

In the 2020 United States presidential election, a plurality of voters in Lynchburg voted for Democratic challenger Joe Biden over Republican incumbent Donald Trump.

The Greater Lynchburg Transit Company (GLTC) operates the local public transport bus service within the city.

The GLTC selected a property directly across from Lynchburg-Kemper Street Station as its top choice of sites upon which to build the new transfer center for their network of public buses.

[129][130] On August 23, 2017, the GLTC launched The Hopper, a free downtown circulator bus with a $479,348 grant from the Virginia Smart Scale program.

[131][132] On June 29, 2019, the GLTC ended service for The Hopper due to "consistently low ridership" and the expiration of a $117,820 state grant that covered operating costs.

Amtrak's long distance Crescent and a Northeast Regional connect Lynchburg with Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Charlotte, Atlanta, Birmingham, New Orleans and intermediate points.

In recent years air travel has increased, with 157,517 passengers flying in and out of the airport in 2012, representing 78% of the total aircraft load factor for that time period.