The Colonial Heights Summer Rhythm In A Centennial Year: River At One End, Boulevard At The Other

If you have lived here more than a season, you already know Colonial Heights runs on a short axis. Roslyn Landing sits at the river end. Southgate Square and The Boulevard sit at the retail end. What has quietly changed this year is how much of the summer calendar now clusters at those two poles, with Fort Clifton and Violet Bank Museum acting as the historical bookends. The city's centennial gives residents a good excuse to stop treating the two ends as separate errands and start using them as one loop.

This is not a visitor's list. It is a note on how the weekly texture has shifted between May and Labor Day, and where the friction points are if you are planning around them.

The River End Is Doing More Work This Year

The trailhead everyone eventually lands at is Roslyn Landing Park, tucked behind the city animal shelter off Charles H. Dimmock Parkway. From there the paved Colonial Heights Appomattox River Trail, part of the C.H.A.R.T.S. system, runs about 1.5 miles west toward Route 301, with a small-boat launch, benches, and a fishing pier at the trailhead itself. The stated goal of the corridor is a continuous open-space greenway roughly two miles long from Roslyn Landing to the western city boundary.

The number worth knowing if you jog or walk this: if you start at the far end of the Roslyn Landing lot and turn around at the marker on the far side of the Martin Luther King Bridge over US-1, you get a full 5K, roughly 3.2 miles, without leaving the paved surface. That is a cleaner measured loop than most residents realize, which is why you see the same faces on it at 7 a.m. and again at 7 p.m.

Two practical notes for July. The park was closed at sunrise on Saturday, July 4, and reopened Sunday, July 5, which is standard for the holiday but worth flagging if you tried to walk on the Fourth and turned around at the gate. And the trail is known to flood in sections after heavy rain, so the day after a storm is not the day to plan a stroller route.

The trail runs dawn to dusk. There is no lighting past the parking area, and the eastern section along the riverbank is quieter than the stretch near Boulevard. Plan the walk to end before the light does.

The Boulevard End Has Its Own Anchors

Cross the city and the rhythm changes. The Boulevard and Southgate Square are where locals eat after the heat breaks. A few anchors have earned their spot:

• Milk & Honey Southern Inspired Kitchen at 168 Southgate Square. Thompson Hospitality opened this as the family-run group's ninth Milk & Honey location, near Virginia State University, and the menu leans New Orleans-inflected Southern brunch. It is open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. seven days a week, which matters if you are trying to feed a family after a late Saturday at the trail.
• The Estate Restaurant & Lounge at 3650 Boulevard. The pitch on their own materials is the largest outdoor patio in the Richmond area, which is either a claim you take seriously or you do not, but the patio itself is genuinely oversized for the market. It fills up early on Thursdays.
• Sedona Taphouse, Wild Ocean Sushi and Bar, The Brickhouse Run, and Captain Tom's Seafood round out the rotation most residents cycle through without thinking about it.

There is also a new arrival worth watching. Bay Boil LLC signed a lease on 9,600 square feet at 1865 Southpark Boulevard in the Southpark Square center for its first Colonial Heights location, a seafood buffet with a full bar, according to Virginia Business. The operator runs three other restaurants in the Virginia Beach area. For a town where the seafood options are already deep, the interesting question is whether a buffet format lands with residents who have Captain Tom's a short drive away.

The Historical Bookends, And What Is Off The Board This Summer

Fort Clifton and Violet Bank are the two historical touchstones locals point out-of-town guests toward. Both have had a notable 2026.

Fort Clifton just closed its 50th Annual Fort Clifton Festival on May 9 and 10, held on Mother's Day weekend at Fort Clifton Park behind Tussing Elementary School, 100 Brockwell Lane. The city put the expected attendance at more than 9,000, reported WTVR, with more than 100 vendors coming from as far north as Pennsylvania and as far south as Florida. To mark the milestone, the festival held its first-ever Saturday-night concert, with yacht-rock band Three Sheets to the Wind playing from 7 to 9 p.m. at the free Fort Clifton After Dark event. The site itself is on 24 acres overlooking the Appomattox and has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1981.

Violet Bank Museum, at 303 Virginia Avenue, is the one that catches people off guard. As of Saturday, June 6, 2026, the museum and its grounds are temporarily closed to the public while exterior renovation work is underway. If your relatives are visiting in August, do not build the afternoon around it. The Cucumber Tree on the grounds, one of the largest of its species in the state, is still there, but the site itself is not accessible for the season.

The wider frame for both is the Colonial Heights 100 campaign, the city's yearlong centennial, which is threading small community events through the calendar with additional programming still being announced. The Virginia Tourism Corporation awarded the city a $10,000 SEF grant for the Fort Clifton Festival's 50th year, matched by $5,000 in city funds, which is why the marketing footprint has been visibly larger than in past summers.

A Working Template For The Rest Of Summer

If you already live here, the value is not in the individual entries. It is in stringing them together so the weeks stop feeling repetitive between now and Labor Day. A version that works for most households:

Monday evening. Pickleball at Lakeview Park on courts 1 through 6, 6 to 8 p.m. Registration runs through the city's Rec1 catalog.

Wednesday morning. Roslyn Landing at 7 a.m. for the 5K loop, before the humidity settles in. The eastern stretch past the bridge marker is the quietest.

Thursday night. The Estate patio if you want to be out, Milk & Honey if you want a booth and a plate of shrimp and grits.

Saturday. Keystone Truck & Tractor Museum at 880 W. Roslyn Road with the kids if the forecast turns, then Marco's or Colonial Italian on the way home. Colonial Italian, worth noting, relocated to 2510 Boulevard and is still finding its rhythm at the new address.

Sunday. Brunch at Milk & Honey, walk it off on the C.H.A.R.T.S. trail, home before the afternoon storms.

The one calendar item worth pinning: the city has flagged additional Colonial Heights 100 events through the fall with details still coming, so check the city's Special Events page every few weeks rather than assuming the summer slate is fixed.

What This Means If You Are Staying Put

The reason to think about the summer rhythm this way, in a centennial year, is that a lot of the small things residents took for granted are getting a coat of paint. Violet Bank is being physically restored. The Fort Clifton Festival added evening programming for the first time. The Boulevard has picked up a new tenant in Bay Boil. None of that changes what Colonial Heights is. It sharpens what the town already does well, which is a short drive between a working river trail and a working commercial strip, with real history on both ends.

If you have been thinking about your own home this summer, whether that is what it is worth in the current market or whether it still fits how you actually use the town, Iris Hernandez is happy to talk it through without any pressure to move on it. Let's Connect.