Civil War Driving Tour of Southwest Virginia

Southwest Virginia is all too often overlooked in histories of the Civil War era. Our region is far away from the best-known battlefields such as Gettysburg and Bull Run. Yet it contains many sites of Civil War significance.

The Virginia Center for Civil War Studies, housed in Virginia Tech’s history department, proudly presents The Civil War Driving Tour of Southwest Virginia. The tour begins life as a printed brochure and website. Eventually, we plan to make the tour accessible through other media, such as a smartphone app and audio files. To request a free copy of the printed brochure, send your mailing address to rcstanley@vt.edu with the subject line “Driving tour brochure request.”

We interpret Civil War history broadly and include sites of significance for the history of all aspects of the Civil War era, roughly 1848-1877. Thus, in addition to battlefields such as Cloyd’s Mountain, we include places such as antebellum slave plantations, wartime hospitals, and sites relevant to the political and social struggles of the Reconstruction years.

There are two ways to navigate through the site: you can click on the map below, or use the alphabetized text links below the map.