HENRICO COUNTY, Va. — Serenity might not be the first word people use to describe Short Pump.
Clogged with congestion, the intersection of Cox Road and West Broad Street epitomizes this stretch of western Henrico.
But one man recalls when this area enjoyed two speeds: slow and slower. Norwood Nuckols’ roots run deep here.
“Well, it is natural for me because I lived it. Nothing like it is today,” Nuckols said. “Most of it was open space.”
Nuckols, 93, grew up on a farm called Erin Shades along Broad Street Road.
The family home had no running water or electricity.
“Not till after I was seven years old,” Nuckols said. “It had boarding or plank boarding all over the house and a tin roof. It was painted white. It was kind of a cold house because there was no insulation.”
As a boy, Nuckols worked the 115 acres of land with his father.
“The first thing I remember was splitting kindling wood when I was 8 years old," Nuckols said.
The man, who was born in 1932, said the pastures and woodlands in Short Pump went on for miles.
“I did a lot of work on the farm growing up,” Nuckols said. “On the farm we grew small grain, corn, and hay, and later, soybeans. He gave me jobs that I had better complete—if you get my drift.”
Structures in Short Pump in the 1930s and '40s were scarce.
Nuckols, an only child, could count his neighbors on one hand.
“There were, as I can first remember, three houses on the east side of Sadler Road,” Nuckols said.
But change arrived over the horizon.
Watch: Take a look at Short Pump in 1991
The young boy noticed new homes moving westward from the city when Broad was two lanes of tar and gravel.
“I can remember those houses being built in 1940,” Nuckols said. “It gradually got to the point—less and less business to do by the farm supply companies.”
The widower and father of three said the opening of Interstate 64 ushered in a housing and business boom.
“This was a slow process, I would say, up till the 1960s,” Nuckols said. “Then in the '60s, things took off.”
Old farms started sprouting subdivisions.
“My family started getting pressure about selling our farmland,” Nuckols said.
In 1973, investors bought his family farm.
“I was able to continue farming it until the end of 1979, and that was that," he said.
By 1980, the place where the Nuckols family once tended cattle and grew corn now gives way to Innsbrook Office Park.
“No part of it is a farm anymore. It was tough. It was very tough,” Nuckols said. “It hurts me to this day, Greg, to think about that.”
The Virginia Tech graduate knows the rural days of Short Pump are numbered.
Mr. Nuckols recently guided me to the spot where his family farm once stood. What was once pastureland is now home to a Dairy Queen, restaurants, and hotels.
“We’re standing in the front yard of my boyhood home. Lots has changed. Yeah. As you can see. Lots has changed,” Nuckols said. “I can still see it. I have a clear memory of it.”
Watch: Take a look at Short Pump in 1996
What is now Cox Road once served as the Nuckols’ driveway.
“There was no noise except the occasional car coming by,” he said. “It was quiet, but the porch wasn’t screened, so we had the occasional mosquitoes.”
During World War II, peaceful nights on the family farm were pierced by music wafting from the dance hall called Tilly’s Kitchen.
“That made a lot of noise. That was one swinging joint,” Nuckols said. “Liquor flowed rather freely there.”
If you look hard enough, vestiges of western Henrico’s farming past still survive.
Three and a half miles away, Norwood led us on a tour while climbing his family tree.
“What was this place back in the day? This is Locust Grove Farm, bought by my great-great-grandfather Israel Nuckols in 1849.”
Nuckols Farm — right in the middle of suburbia — is a place Norwood remembers visiting as a young boy.
“It really is rather remarkable,” he said. “It was lived in by the family until approximately 1975. There were dairy cows on this property. But time doesn’t stand still.”
The landmark, now a Henrico County park, is also the final resting place of generations of his ancestors stretching back to the 19th century.
Norwood Nuckols represents a bridge to a bygone era when pastoral Short Pump was flowing at a slower pace.
“Yeah, I’m probably one of the youngest men around to have had that type of experience," Nuckols said. "It is my honor. Growing up on a farm is like nothing else. Well, that is the way it was.”
I would like to thank Mr. Nuckols for sharing his memories with me. I'd also like to thank Henrico County for providing some of the images used in our story. If you have any stories linked to local history you would like to share, you can reach Greg McQuade at gmcquade@wtvr.com.
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