A Patriotic Family Road Trip in Virginia

Arlington National Cemetery

Arlington, VA

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, JFK's eternal flame, and 400,000+ heroes who paid the price.

Hampton National Cemetery

Hampton, VA

A national cemetery established in 1866, holding Union soldiers and veterans of every war since.

Mount Vernon

Mount Vernon, VA

George Washington's home on the Potomac. The grounds, the mansion, and his tomb.

Monticello

Charlottesville, VA

Thomas Jefferson's mountaintop home in Virginia. He designed every inch of it himself.

Hollywood Cemetery

Richmond, VA

A garden cemetery above the James, resting place of Presidents James Monroe and John Tyler.

Berkeley Plantation

Charles City, VA

The 1726 birthplace of William Henry Harrison and home of signer Benjamin Harrison V, where "Taps" was composed in 1862.

Yorktown Battlefield

Yorktown, VA

October 1781. Cornwallis surrendered here and the British band played "The World Turned Upside Down."

Manassas National Battlefield Park

Manassas, VA

Site of the First and Second Battles of Bull Run, in July 1861 and August 1862, where Stonewall Jackson earned his nickname.

Cold Harbor Battlefield

Mechanicsville, VA

Part of Richmond National Battlefield Park, where Grant's assault of June 3, 1864 cost thousands of casualties in under an hour.

Petersburg National Battlefield

Petersburg, VA

The ground of the 292-day siege of 1864–65, the longest of the Civil War, including the Crater.

Pamplin Historical Park

Petersburg, VA

The site of the Union Breakthrough of April 2, 1865, which forced Lee to abandon Petersburg and Richmond, with a museum of the common soldier.

Virginia State Capitol

Richmond, VA

Designed by Thomas Jefferson himself, Richmond's capitol is the oldest state capitol in continuous use in the country.

Colonial Williamsburg

Williamsburg, VA

An entire eighteenth-century capital, restored and worked by tradesmen in period.

Gunston Hall

Mason Neck, VA

The home of George Mason, who wrote the Virginia Declaration of Rights and refused to sign the Constitution without a bill of rights.

Cape Henry Lighthouse

Virginia Beach, VA

A lighthouse completed in 1792, the first built by the new federal government, near where the Jamestown colonists first landed in 1607.

Historic Jamestowne

Jamestown, VA

The site of the first permanent English settlement in America, founded in 1607, with ongoing excavation of James Fort.

Adam Thoroughgood House

Virginia Beach, VA

A brick house built around 1719 on land granted to colonist Adam Thoroughgood, one of the oldest homes in Virginia.

St. John's Church

Richmond, VA

The 1741 church where Patrick Henry declared "give me liberty, or give me death!" to the Second Virginia Convention in March 1775.

John Marshall House

Richmond, VA

The 1790 home of John Marshall, the chief justice who established the Supreme Court's power of judicial review.

Scotchtown

Beaverdam, VA

The plantation house where Patrick Henry lived from 1771 to 1778, through his liberty speech and his first term as governor.

Marine Corps War Memorial

Arlington, VA

The bronze of six Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima on February 23, 1945, after Joe Rosenthal's photograph.

National Museum of the Marine Corps

Triangle, VA

Opened in 2006 near Marine Corps Base Quantico, its soaring atrium echoes the flag raising on Iwo Jima.

Battleship Wisconsin

Norfolk, VA

An Iowa-class battleship commissioned in 1944 that served in World War II, Korea and the Gulf War, berthed at Nauticus.

MacArthur Memorial

Norfolk, VA

The burial place of General Douglas MacArthur, in Norfolk's 1850 city hall, with his papers and museum.

Fort Monroe National Monument

Hampton, VA

A moated stone fort on Old Point Comfort, near where the first enslaved Africans in English America arrived in 1619 and where freedom seekers found refuge in 1861.

Virginia War Museum

Newport News, VA

A museum of American military history from 1775, with weapons, uniforms and a section of the Berlin Wall.

Military Aviation Museum

Virginia Beach, VA

A museum of flying military aircraft from World War I and World War II, many restored to airworthy condition.

Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum

Portsmouth, VA

A museum of Norfolk Naval Shipyard, founded in 1767 and the oldest shipyard in the U.S. Navy.

Pentagon Memorial

Arlington, VA

184 illuminated benches, one for each person killed at the Pentagon and aboard American Airlines Flight 77 on September 11, 2001.

Virginia War Memorial

Richmond, VA

A memorial dedicated in 1956 bearing the names of Virginians killed in service since World War II.

Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center

Chantilly, VA

The Air and Space Museum's giant hangars near Dulles, holding the Space Shuttle Discovery, the Enola Gay and an SR-71 Blackbird.

The Mariners' Museum

Newport News, VA

A maritime museum holding the recovered turret of USS Monitor, the ironclad that fought CSS Virginia in 1862.

Virginia Air & Space Science Center

Hampton, VA

The visitor center for NASA Langley, where the Mercury Seven astronauts trained, with the Apollo 12 command module.

American Civil War Museum – Historic Tredegar

Richmond, VA

A museum in the Tredegar Iron Works, the Confederacy's main cannon foundry, telling the war from Union, Confederate and African American views.

Virginia Museum of History & Culture

Richmond, VA

The museum of the Virginia Historical Society, telling the state's history from the first peoples forward.

Edgar Allan Poe Museum

Richmond, VA

A museum of the writer who grew up in Richmond, beside the city's oldest surviving house, from around 1754.

Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site

Richmond, VA

The home of Maggie Walker, who in 1903 became the first Black woman to charter a bank in America.