In 1989 the Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors approved a special area plan for Midlothian Mines Park, partly as a response to economic growth along Midlothian Turnpike resulting in population explosion. The core of the new "Special Area Plan" was based on the boundary of the plan of 1989 and extended westward to Route 288 as a natural boundary, and a map of the Midlothian community special area plan boundary was provided by John G. Ownby for the "Richmond Times-Dispatch". Midlothian Mines Park, on the site of the first commercially-mined coal deposits in the Colony of Virginia, first opened for visitors in 2004.