Hanover County is where the Richmond suburbs give way to farmland, from Mechanicsville and Atlee out past Hanover Courthouse to Doswell and Beaverdam. Two sets of road rules apply here, one for the Town of Ashland and one for everywhere else, and longer, rural drives bring their own questions.
Mechanicsville, Atlee, Ashland, Hanover Courthouse, Doswell, where Kings Dominion stands, Montpelier, Rockville and Beaverdam, and the farms and lanes between them. Send your address even if it is a long way down a county road.
Ashland, home of Randolph-Macon College and a town that calls itself the Center of the Universe, maintains every public road and sidewalk inside its limits except Interstate 95. Its driveway entrance policy, revised in October 2024, says a permit from the Town must be obtained before building any driveway or entrance from a Town street or right-of-way. The policy asks for a surety bond on every entrance, at least $1,200 for a single residential entrance and $2,500 for a single commercial one, and entrances without curb and gutter are built to the state's standard for that type. The permit fee itself comes from the Town code and goes on your quote once confirmed.
Hanover's own words: all public roads and bridges outside the Town of Ashland are maintained by the Virginia Department of Transportation. So a new or rebuilt entrance onto a county road needs VDOT's private entrance permit, handled through its Ashland Residency office on North Washington Highway, which also serves Goochland, New Kent, Charles City and Henrico. The owner is responsible for obtaining that permit and for maintaining the entrance afterwards.
In practice: work that stays on your land, such as sealing, crack filling and patching, needs no permit. Anything at the road is only booked with a paving contractor who can get the permit, and if a job needs one we tell you before you agree to anything.
Hanover licenses only certain kinds of business, and contractors are among them. The county's page sets the requirement at gross receipts over $100,000, taxed at ten cents per $100, and asks businesses based outside the county to file once their Hanover receipts reach $25,000.
Beyond Mechanicsville, many homes sit well back from the road at the end of a long drive, and plenty of those are still gravel or part gravel. The two questions we hear most are whether it is worth paving a gravel drive, and whether a long asphalt drive is worth sealing.
Gravel to asphalt. A gravel drive that has been driven on for years is often a decent start for a base, but only after it is regraded, topped up with fresh stone where it has thinned, and compacted, and only if the water that runs across or along it has somewhere to go. Paving over ruts and soft spots just prints them into the new surface. It can also make sense to pave the first stretch from the road and the area by the house, where the turning and the washing out happen, and leave the middle in stone.
Sealing a long drive. Long drives are usually in full sun, which greys them fastest, and their edges often meet grass or a ditch with nothing to support them. Sealing, crack filling and keeping those edges from crumbling is what adds years. Length works in your favour on price, since the one rate per square foot does not climb with distance from the road.
Plenty of paved lots out here do not see traffic every day. A country church lot fills on Sunday and sits empty the rest of the week; a produce stand or a farm supply yard is busy in season and quiet in winter. Lots like that wear less from tyres and more from sun and weather, so they tend to need sealing less often than a daily commercial lot, and what they need most is cracks kept closed before they let water under the surface.
The schedule is built around the busy day rather than ours. A church lot is sealed early in the week so it has fully cured well before the weekend, and a seasonal business is done in its slow months. Faded stall lines, accessible spaces and the arrows at the entrance are restriped once the coat has cured, all inside the same per square foot price.
VDOT, through the Ashland Residency, because Mechanicsville is outside the Town of Ashland.
No. The Town issues its own permit and asks for a surety bond on every entrance.
Send the address. Long rural drives are exactly the kind of job worth the trip.
To the south: Henrico County and the City of Richmond.
