Danville, in “Southside” Virginia near the North Carolina border, is a former factory town, suffering the issues towns suffer when those factories shut down. The city of 40,000 was once one of the richest places in the Piedmont area, a major center of first the tobacco and then the textile industries. It was also, for a one-week period, the final capital city of the Confederacy.

The city’s plans for dealing with its past and planning for its future will be covered in future posts. Read the set-up here.