EARLY YEARS
In 1912, Seven Pines, the site of a National Cemetery for Union Soldiers who died in the Civil Wal, was also a popular excursion destination. There was a picnic pavilion, and a few homes were scattered around the rural area at the junction of Nine Mile Road and the old Williamsburg-Richmond Stage Road. The Seven Pines Railway Company, chartered in 1888, operated an electric trolley line between the community and Richmond - 2 ½ cents fare if you left early in the morning.
Some 50 years after the Battle of Fair Oaks, this part of Henrico County found itself involved in preparations war when the country joined WW I on April 6, 1917. A year later th DuPont Engineering Company started building the largest powder plant in the world in Seven Pines.
In September 1918, while the bag-loading plant was beginning operation, the Seven Pines trolley line was deemed unprofitable and was taken over by the government. Subsequently the line was sold to Oliver Sands and his group, and renamed the Richmond-Fairfield Railway Company.
BECOMING SANDSTON
On February 6, 1921 Oliver Jackson Sands announced that the Richmond-Fairfield Railway was buying more than 200 Aladdin Homes built by the U. S. Housing Corporation, to prevent the homes from being destroyed. When the village applied for its own post office, the U. S. Post Office Department noted the existence of another Fairfield in Virginia, so the name of the village was changed by the Civic Association to Sandston in honor of Mr. Sands.