Mineral Historic District

Mineral is a small Piedmont Virginia town in Louisa County, platted in 1890 during a mining boom and laid out by Walter Bishop as a grid of narrow lots and alleys. The historic district covers about 120 acres and includes some 231 contributing resources, mostly wood-frame houses in Queen Anne, Colonial Revival, American Foursquare and Bungalow styles. The largest houses line Mineral and Louisa Avenues, while smaller one-story homes fill the side streets. The brick commercial buildings around Mineral Avenue and First Street survived the fires that destroyed earlier frame structures. Other landmarks include the Chesapeake and Ohio-designed railroad depot from the mid-1880s, an Odd Fellows Hall built in 1894, four churches, a 1927 brick school, and industrial buildings such as an ice plant, a power plant and a Standard Oil building. The district was listed for its community planning and architecture, representing a town that grew quickly with the mining and railroad economy and kept its early twentieth-century small-town character.