Tucked into a small natural depression just north of Tottenville, Richmond Valley blends into the landscape.  It is an area of great natural beauty, complete with hills and dales, veined with creeks and marshes, that offers exceptional landscape, wildlife, flora and fauna, woodlands, and historic legacies.

Richmond Valley gained a separate identity when a post office was established there in 1828, and it soon became a small town center complete with grocery store and a one-room schoolhouse.  Later, in 1860, when the Staten Island Railway was extended to Tottenville, a station and ticket office was built.  The ticket office is long gone, but the Richmond Valley Station exists today.

Richmond Valley Station, facing Tottenville, 1927

Along the winding stretch of Richmond Valley Road, the 22-acre site occupied by Gateway Cathedral, an independent, fundamentalist Christian church and educational facility, is undergoing expansion.   The church opened in 1993, and is bounded by Richmond Valley Road to the south, and Boscombe Ave. to its north.  Around the turn of the 20th century, this site was home to Dr. Peter C. Juhl.  Dr. Juhl is listed in Industries of Staten Island before Consolidation, (1898) as "Veterinary surgeon and proprietor of Richmond Valley park, race track and picnic grounds."

Also listed in Industries is Barnard's Silk Mill, once located down the road from Dr. Juhl and closer to the Sound.  The mill is described as a "Manufacturer of giumps and fringes for undertakers use.  Proprietor:  O.H. Barnard."

The Disosway family, and later the Coles, were among the early settlers of Richmond Valley.  Records indicate that Cornelius Disosway's grist mill was constructed on Mill Pond prior to 1772.  It was the earliest known commercial establishment in southwestern Staten Island.  Later owners of the mill would include the Butlers, the Coles, and, by 1870, the Weir family, who were the last to operate the mill.

The Totten family, who owned more than 60 acres of land north of Amboy Rd., was instrumental in establishing a Methodist congregation in Richmond Valley.  The forerunner of Tottenville’s Bethel United Methodist Church, known as The Tabernacle, was built on land donated by Joseph Totten.  In the early 19th century, The Tabernacle also served as a schoolhouse and a meeting place for the growing Methodist congregation.

In 1940, as part of an Island-wide capital project to discontinue street-level railroad crossings which were deemed unsafe, a section of elevated road rerouted Richmond Valley Road and its connection to Amboy Road.

Richmond Valley's two-story, two-room schoolhouse, built in 1897 and known as P.S. 2, closed its doors permanently in 1943.   Fifteen students waved good-bye to their school and to their teacher, Miss Ava A. Butler, when the school term ended in June 1943.  The building remained standing on Weiner St. until it was razed in 1959.  Miss Butler, who was educated in the school, also taught there for 29 years.

At one time, the meandering Mill Creek and swamplands filled the commercial stretch along Page Ave. from Amboy Rd. to the Outerbridge toll plaza.  Despite the foreboding signs announcing proposed commercial development, the area is still rich in woodlands, wetlands, and wildlife.  Somehow, a few ponds and “peeper” frogs have survived the encroaching development.  But for how long?

Swans feeding in Mill Creek outlet, Richmond Valley