Within a few years of Emancipation, freedman Hugh Carr established River View farm, where he successfully raised tobacco, wheat, corn, and livestock.

Present Woodburn Road was once a major route to Earlysville, passing through several large antebellum plantations and crossing the Rivanna River at a now-vanished bridge.

The cornerstone of the historic Union Ridge community was the Baptist church, organized shortly after the Civil War and located at this site since the late 1870s.

In the early 1920s, two cemeteries for African Americans were established along Hydraulic Road, half a mile south of Union Ridge Baptist Church.

Present Lambs Road, which retains much of its rural character, once passed through large farms purchased by African Americans after the Civil War.

In the 1870s, freedpeople from more than twenty families began acquiring small plots of land along present Georgetown and Hydraulic roads.