804 Area Code – Richmond, Virginia: Location, Time Zone & History

Richmond's area code, 804, is not one of the original 1947 codes but a later split from 703, entering service June 24, 1973, to cover the eastern two-thirds of Virginia -- everything from the Northern Neck through Richmond down to Danville and out to the Eastern Shore. Two further splits pared it down to its present footprint: the Eastern Shore and most of Hampton Roads left to form 757 on July 1, 1996, and the western Piedmont, including Danville, Lynchburg, and Charlottesville, split off as 434 on June 1, 2001. Each redrawing left Richmond, the seat of state government, anchored to 804.

As the Richmond region kept growing, Virginia's State Corporation Commission approved an all-services overlay, 686, in 2022; it went into service February 1, 2024, with ten-digit local dialing already mandatory ahead of activation, so every existing 804 number stayed put. The metro area now counts several Fortune 500 headquarters -- CarMax, Altria Group, Markel Group, and Dominion Energy -- alongside strong financial services and logistics sectors, while the plan area still stretches into the rural Northern Neck and Middle Peninsula along the Chesapeake Bay.