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Lynchburg is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2010 census, the population was 75,568. The 2014 census estimates a increase to 79,047.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/51/51680.html )〕 Located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains along the banks of the James River, Lynchburg is known as the "City of Seven Hills" or "The Hill City".〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.lynchburghistoricalfoundation.org/history/ )〕 Lynchburg was the only major city in Virginia that was not captured by the Union before the end of the American Civil War.〔Spencer Tucker, ''(American Civil War : the definitive encyclopedia and document collection )'' (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2013), 1174.〕 Lynchburg is the principal city of the Metropolitan Statistical Area of Lynchburg, near the geographic center of Virginia. It is the fifth largest MSA in Virginia with a population of 254,171 and hosts several institutions of higher education. Other nearby cities include Roanoke, Charlottesville, and Danville. Lynchburg's sister cities are Rueil-Malmaison, France and Glauchau, Germany. ==History== A part of Monacan country upon the arrival of English settlers in Virginia, the region had traditionally been occupied by them and other Siouan Tutelo-speaking tribes since ca. 1270, driving Virginia Algonquians eastward. 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 Batts and Fallam in 1671. The Siouans occupied the area until c. 1702, when it was taken in conquest by the Seneca Iroquois. The Iroquois ceded control to the Colony of Virginia beginning in 1718, and formally at the Treaty of Albany in 1721. First settled in 1757, Lynchburg was named for its founder, John Lynch, who at the age of 17 started a ferry service at a ford across the James River to carry traffic to and from New London. He was also responsible for Lynchburg's first bridge across the river, which replaced the ferry in 1812. He and his mother are buried in the graveyard at the South River Friends Meetinghouse. The "City of Seven Hills" quickly developed along the hills surrounding Lynch's Ferry. Thomas Jefferson maintained a home near Lynchburg, called Poplar Forest. Jefferson frequented Lynchburg and remarked "''Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to be useful to the town of Lynchburg. I consider it as the most interesting spot in the state.''" Lynchburg was established by charter in 1786 at the site of Lynch's Ferry on the James River. These new easy means of transportation routed traffic through Lynchburg, and allowed it to become the new center of commerce for tobacco trading. In 1810, Jefferson wrote, "''Lynchburg is perhaps the most rising place in the U.S.... It ranks now next to Richmond in importance...''" Lynchburg became a center of commerce and manufacture in the 19th century, and by the 1850s, Lynchburg (along with New Bedford, Mass.) was one of the richest towns per capita in the U.S.〔〕 Chief industries were tobacco, iron and steel. Transportation facilities included the James River Bateau on the James River, and later, the James River and Kanawha Canal and, still later, four railroads, including the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad and the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad. Early on, Lynchburg was not known for its religiosity. In 1804, evangelist Lorenzo Dow wrote of Lynchburg "''... where I spoke in the open air in what I conceived to be the seat of Satan's Kingdom. Lynchburg was a deadly place for the worship of God''." This was in reference to the lack of churches in Lynchburg. As the wealth of Lynchburg grew, prostitution and other "rowdy" activities became quite common and, in many cases, ignored, if not accepted, by the "powers that be" of the time. Much of this activity took place in an area of downtown referred to as the "''Buzzard's Roost''." During the American Civil War, Lynchburg, which served as a Confederate supply base, was approached within by the Union forces of General David Hunter as he drove south from the Shenandoah Valley. Under the false impression that the Confederate forces stationed in Lynchburg were much larger than anticipated, Hunter was repelled by the forces of Confederate General Jubal Early on June 18, 1864, in the Battle of Lynchburg. To create the false impression, a train was continuously run up and down the tracks while the citizens of Lynchburg cheered as if reinforcements were unloading. Local prostitutes took part in the deception, misinforming their Union clients of the large number of Confederate reinforcements. From April 6–10, 1865, Lynchburg served as the Capital of Virginia. Under Gov. William Smith, the executive and legislative branches of the commonwealth moved to Lynchburg for the few days between the fall of Richmond and the fall of the Confederacy. In the latter 19th century, Lynchburg's economy evolved into manufacturing (sometimes referred to as the "Pittsburgh of the South") and, per capita, made the city one of the wealthiest in the United States. In 1880, Lynchburg resident James Albert Bonsack invented the first cigarette rolling machine, and shortly thereafter Dr. Charles Browne Fleet, a physician and pharmacological tinkerer, introduced the first mass marketed over-the-counter enema. About this time, Lynchburg was also the preferred site for the Norfolk & Western junction with the Shenandoah Valley Railroad. However, the citizens of Lynchburg did not want the junction due to the noise and pollution it would create. Therefore, it was located in what would become the City of Roanoke. In the late 1950s, a number of interested citizens, including Virginia Senator Mosby G. Perrow, Jr., requested the federal government to change its long-planned route for the interstate highway now known as I-64 between Clifton Forge and Richmond.〔"Additional Interstate Road Systems Approved," Petersburg-Colonial Heights Progress-Index, 1958-04-27 at 20.〕 Since the 1940s, maps of the federal interstate highway system depicted that highway taking a northern route, with no interstate highway running through Lynchburg, but the federal government assured Virginia that the highway's route would be decided by the state.〔Routes of the Recommended Interregional Highway System, ca. 1943.〕 A proposed southern route called for the Interstate to follow from Richmond via US-360 and US-460, via Lynchburg to Roanoke and US-220 from Roanoke to Clifton Forge, then west following US-60 into West Virginia. Although the State Highway Commission's minutes reflected its initial approval of the northern route, the issue remained in play,〔Minutes of the Meeting of the State Highway Commission of Virginia, Held in Richmond September 11, 1945, page 12.〕 proponents of the southern route ultimately succeeded in persuading a majority of Virginia Highway Commissioners to support the change after a study championed by Perrow demonstrated that it would serve a greater percentage of the state's manufacturing and textile centers. But in July 1961 Governor Lindsay Almond and U.S. Secretary of Commerce Luther Hodges announced that the route would not be changed.〔"Opposition to Northern Route Dropped," Danville Bee, 1961-07-06 at 3〕 This left Lynchburg as the only city with a population in excess of 50,000 (at the time) not served by an interstate.〔Richmond Times-Dispatch, June 13, 1999.〕 For several decades throughout the mid-20th century, the state of Virginia authorized compulsory sterilization of the mentally retarded for the purpose of eugenics. The operations were carried out at the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, now known as the Central Virginia Training School, located just outside Lynchburg in Madison Heights. An estimated 8,300 Virginians were sterilized and relocated to Lynchburg, known as a "dumping ground" of sorts for the feeble-minded, poor, blind, epileptic, and those otherwise seen as genetically "unfit".〔("A Simple Act of Mothering" ), ''Poor Magazine/PNN'' 〕 Sterilizations were carried out for 35 years until 1972, when operations were finally halted. 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. As a result of this suit, the victims received formal apologies and counseling if they chose. Requests to grant the victims reverse sterilization operations were denied. Carrie Buck, the plaintiff in the United States Supreme Court case ''Buck v. Bell'', was sterilized after being classified as "feeble-minded", as part of the state's eugenics program while she was a patient at the Lynchburg Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded. The story of Carrie Buck's sterilization and the court case was made into a television drama in 1994, ''(Against Her Will: The Carrie Buck Story )''. "Virginia State Epileptic Colony," a song by the Manic Street Preachers on their 2009 album 'Journal For Plague Lovers,' addresses the state's program of eugenics. Over 40 sites in Lynchburg are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Lynchburg, Virginia」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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