Sure, today Charlottesville is known as a hip little city in the heart of Virginia, but it wasn't always that way. Once, it was a podunk village seemingly in the middle of nowhere.

The city got its start this way: In the 1700s, the surrounding Albemarle County was much larger than it is today, and the center of the county and its government was Scottsville, 20 miles south of Charlottesville, on the James River.

But the county was divided in 1761, with much of its land going to form other counties. In 1762, the General Assembly approved the creation of Charlottesville, in the middle of the new, smaller Albemarle, as the county seat. The 50-acre town was named in honor of King George III's young wife, Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenberg-Strelitz.

Unlike other early colonial towns and villages, though, Charlottesville was not built along a navigable river by which merchandise could be floated down to markets in the Tidewater region. The little town seemed destined to remain an out-of-the-way outpost. And in the beginning, the town was no more than a few homes and shops placed around the courthouse, a pillory, stocks and a whipping post.

During the Revolutionary War, Virginia's government removed itself briefly from Richmond to Charlottesville to stay out of the clutches of British troops. In June 1781, British Col. Banastre Tarleton led 180 dragoons and 70 mounted cavalry from Hanover to Charlottesville in a bold attempt to capture members of the General Assembly and Thomas Jefferson himself.

But on the night of June 3, Capt. John "Jack" Jouett saw the troops at Cuckoo Tavern in Louisa County. Jumping on his horse, Jouett rode the 40 miles to Charlottesville through dense woods and brambles to warn Jefferson and the legislators. They were able to flee the town as Tarleton's men arrived.

In 1825, the town experienced substantial growth as the University of Virginia opened with 123 students. Six years earlier, Jefferson had persuaded a group of other Virginia statesmen to build the school near his home. The school's location a mile from the town's center prompted businesses to spring up outside the downtown area. In 1851, Charlottesville elected its first mayor.

The town's isolation left it virtually unscathed during the Civil War, because it was not a target of strategic value. However, Union Maj. Gen. George Armstrong Custer occupied Charlottesville for three days in March 1865. The town also served as a vast hospital for Confederate wounded.

The arrival of the railroads in the 1850s set Charlottesville on a path toward commercial and residential expansion, with businesses and neighborhoods springing up across the town's hilly terrain.

In 1888, Charlottesville was incorporated as a full-fledged city.