It’s been 6 years since Gaston flooded Main Street and Shockoe Bottom:

Then, at about 6pm at night as we all stood in the main entrance way to our street level offices the front doors opened….. it was a wall of water about 12 inches high. It swept through the office. Everyone ran to get stuff off of the floor and into the cars in our parking deck behind our office. Within a minute or two the water had risen to about 3 feet deep. It was time for us to leave. [...] We ran up stairs and spent the next 5 hours on the second floor of the building watching in amazement as we looked out the windows onto what was East Main Street. It was now a 9 foot deep river.

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Cary Street between South 20th and 22nd Streets will be closed Wednesday from 8AM-4PM, and the Brander Street entrance to Ancarrow’s boat ramp will be closed Monday from 9-11AM for flood wall testing.

On June 22, 1972, flooding from Hurricane Agnes put the James River all up into Shockoe and Manchester.

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The new FEMA Flood Map for the City of Richmond will be the subject of a public meeting Tuesday, July 1, from 7–9 PM in Council Chambers at City Hall. FEMA has redrawn all of the floodplains within the city of Richmond and City officials will be on hand to answer questions and assist citizens in the appeals process. The new designation would affect approximately 2681 properties. More info and maps.

From the New York Times’ recently opened archive comes an account of flooding in Rockett’s, Shockoe, and Manchester before the turn of the last century:

The rush of the increased volume of water and ice from the upper James River [...] has resulted in in one of the heaviest floods ever known here. The wharves at Rockett’s, the landing place for steamers, and the streets for blocks around are under water, and the Virginia Navigation Company’s wharf has been swept away.

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Looking east from the corner of 14th and East Main Streets in 1886.

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