Claremont is an incorporated town in Surry County, Virginia, United States. The population was 378 at the 2010 census. A granite marker stands as a memorial to the arrival of British settlers in the area. The town was incorporated in 1886, had a port on the James River, and gained railroad utility as a terminus for a while previously being abandoned. Claremont was house to the Temperance, Industrial, and Collegiate Institute, a school for African Americans founded by a former slave. The area includes a historical marker commemorating the institution.

A granite marker in a circle in the middle of town commemorates the landing here upon May 5, 1607, of English settlers. Beginning in the late 17th and before 18th centuries, Claremont was a busy port town upon the navigable part of the James River, shipping many goods, but especially hogsheads of tobacco.

After the Civil War, Willie Allen, who familial Claremont Manor, moved to New York and sold the property. J. Frank Mancha, a Maryland genuine estate developer took upon the project to develop, subdivide and colonize a extra town there in 1879. Incorporated in 1886, the town of Claremont became the eastern terminus of the supplementary Atlantic and Danville Railway (A&D), a narrow gauge railroad, which was completed to a point close Emporia called James River Junction, where it connected subsequent to a okay gauge track towards Danville. Unfortunately for Claremont, the A&D established to link up its western leg taking into account a other eastern terminus in West Norfolk upon the harbor of Hampton Roads, and the heritage to Claremont, which was never standard-gauged, went into semi-abandonment. After some use for lumber transport as the Surry, Sussex and Southampton Railway, the rails were removed in the late 1930s.

In the years since, the area has remained as a rural enclave, but some resort use developed along the bluffs and beaches of the James River. Many homes along the riverfront were terribly damaged, and Claremont’s against beach, Sunken Meadow’s was destroyed in 2003 by Hurricane Isabel.