Short Pump Real Estate
Short Pump is near the northwest corner of Henrico County and has its own exit off Interstate 64. It’s been a meeting place throughout its 200-year history.
The tavern stood where several roads intersected with Deep Run Turnpike – to-day known as Broad Street. Many who were traveling from Richmond to Charlottesville would stop at the inn to water their horses, get a meal and perhaps spend the night.
The tavern expanded. A porch was built atop the water pump and there wasn’t enough clearance to give it a full stroke, according to research by Trevor Dickerson, a local historian. Rather than incur the expense of moving the pump, Saunders put a shorter handle on it.
Today, the Broad Street entrance to a Wal-Mart Supercenter is paved over the site of the tavern. Busy shoppers cruise by a historical marker with barely a glance. “In the days when the tavern was a stagecoach stop between Richmond and Charlottesville,” the marker reads, “the drivers would often say, ‘I’ll see you at Short Pump.'”