On day 50 of “The Ultimate USA Road Trip” we drive from Lynchburg to Kill Devil Hills. We leave the mountains and the Blue Ridge Parkway to head east through Virginia to the coast of North Carolina. It will be a long day with many kilometers on mainly provincial roads, but to save time we also take part of the Highway.

The first interesting stop is planned at Appomattox Court House National Historic Park where the Battle of Appomattox Courthouse took place on April 9, 1865 during the American Civil War. It was the last battle of the Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee before the army surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant.

There are several interesting buildings in the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park;
The Plunkett-Meeks Store was built by John H. Plunkett in 1852 and later purchased in the early 1860s by Albert Francis Meeks, the village shopkeeper, postmaster and druggist. It was the social center of village life in what was then known as Clover Hill, Virginia. It is an important part of the historic setting of the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park. It represents the federal government's participation in the preservation and commemoration of historically significant events. Meek's son, known as Lafayette, died of typhoid fever while serving the Confederate army. He died when he was only nineteen years old and is buried behind the shop. The shop has been used from time to time as a private residence and at one time as the presbytery of the Presbyterian Church.

The New County Jail. The layout and exterior finish of the New County Jail clearly depicts its use as a prison. It is a three story building forty feet wide and six feet deep and is located across Main Street from the site of the old original wooden prison. Construction of the building began in 1860, but was not completed until 1867 due to the Civil War. The structure is made of brick and iron. Due to the long construction time, it has at least two different types of stone. The prison cells with iron bars were located on the top two floors. It also has an attic. The prisoner cells and the second and third floors had no heat source at all. The first floor where the sheriff's office and quarters used to be have fireplaces.

The McLean House was owned by Wilmer McLean and his wife Virginia towards the end of the American Civil War. It served as the site of the surrender conference for General Robert E. Lee's Confederate army on April 9, 1865, after a nearby battle. The farmhouse was built in the historic Piedmont Virginia architectural style of the mid-nineteenth century. The current building is a reconstruction of the original using the original materials. It was painstakingly deconstructed in the 1890s for shipment and display in Washington, D.C., but those plans fell through and the materials remained on site. In the 1940s, it passed into the hands of the National Park Service and was rebuilt on its original foundation. The house was made available for public viewing in 1949.

The Bocock-Isbell House was built in 1849 to 1850 by Thomas S. Bocock and Henry F. Bocock, brothers. Thomas was a member of the United States Congress and Speaker of the Confederate House of Representatives. At the time, Henry was a clerk of the Appomattox County Court. Lewis Daniel Isbell (1818-1889) was Appomattox County Commonwealth Attorney during the American Civil War (Judge later) and occupied the house at the time of General Robert E. Lee's surrender to General Ulysses S. Grant in 1865. He was Appomattox County's representative at the Secession Convention of 1861 and voted to secede from the Union. The Bocock-Isbell House was restored in 1948 to 1949 and preserved from 1992 to 1993. Work was resumed to stabilize it in 1995 and again it was preserved in 1999.

The Mariah Wright House was built in 1823 by Pryor Wright and was inherited by his wife Mariah after his death in 1851. It is significant to the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park because of its association with the site of the April 9, 1865 surrender of the Confederate army under Robert E. Lee to Union commander Ulysses S. Grant with their main commanders. That morning, Brigadier General Joshua Chamberlain's Union infantry advancing through the village was stopped at the edge of town. When his right flank reached Mariah Wright's house, a flag of truce came from the Confederate lines. General George Armstrong Custer, of Little Bighorn fame, received the flag.


The Jones Law Office, also known as the Lorenzo D. Kelly House was owned by Kelly in the 1800s and used as a single-family home. The original law office was also used by John Robinson in the nineteenth century after Kelly as a home for his large family. The Appomattox Court House National Historical Park states that there are three National Register Criteria that make the structure historically significant.

Criteria A - It has significant value because of its association with the site of the surrender of the Supreme Military Commander of the Confederacy and the main army, which represented the end of the American Civil War.
Criteria B - It has significant value because of its association with the site of the surrender of General Robert E. Lee and his subordinate commanders to Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, the future President of the United States.
Criteria C - It retains the distinctive features of the epitome of the period and method of construction typical in Piedmont Virginia in the mid-nineteenth century. It is considered typical of a county seat of government and of a typical farming community in Virginia in the mid-nineteenth century.

The Peers House is significant because The Confederates marched past the house on the Richmond-Lynchburg Stage Road to go to battle on April 9, 1865. Here they stacked their guns on April 12, 1865. One of the last artillery shots fired by the Confederate Northern Virginia killed Lieutenant Hiram Clark of the 185th New York Infantry near the Peers home on the morning of April 9, 1865. The Peers House embodies the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, and method of construction of rural Virginia in the mid-nineteenth century.

We drive through the Appomattox-Buckingham State Forest, the largest state forest in the Piedmont of Virginia in Appomattox and Buckingham counties. The 19,808 acres (30.95 sq mi; 80.16 km2) are covered with a mix of oak-hickory and pine forest. Dominant tree species are oaks, hickories, yellow poplars, red maple, and pines. The forest was originally farmland that was used intensively until the 1930s. At this point, the land was exhausted and the United States government purchased it as part of the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act. In 1954, the tract of land was transferred to Virginia, creating the Appomattox-Buckingham State Forest. Many farms of the former farmers can be found in the forest. The Virginia Department of Forestry continues to work to transition the regenerating forest to a mixed ecosystem.


The next stop is at the Crewe Railroad Museum in the town of Crewe. This museum has a relatively small collection, but visitors can climb up into the cab of the steam locomotive, US #606, and the cab of N&W EMD diesel-electric GP7u #2185, as well as poke around NW C-31 Caboose #518501. A number of vehicles can be seen from the road. The station building is home to many historic photographs, a model of the original Crewe Roundhouse and several models of steam locomotives built by Al Gerard of Washington. There is also a large model railroad layout created by Ron Timma of Jetersville.


We leave Virginia and drive further up the coast to the end point of the day in Kill Devil Hills, there are several hotels and lodges, close to the beach, to spend the night. Formerly known as Kitty Hawk, Kill Devil Hills is where the Wright Brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight of a powered aircraft on December 17, 1903 with the Wright Flyer.
In this town the next day we visit the Wright Brothers National Memorial with a visitor center, a museum, and a souvenir shop, an escape room with working replicas of the glider and the Wright Flyer. The original Wright Flyer is in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. The replica at the Wright Brothers National Memorial is a full-size reproduction of the original and can fly, given to the National Park Service on the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers. historic powered flight.

The Wright brothers, Orville Wright (August 19, 1871 – January 30, 1948) and Wilbur Wright (April 16, 1867 – May 30, 1912), were American aviation pioneers widely recognized for inventing, building, and flying the world's first successful engine-powered plane. They made the first controlled flight on the Wright Flyer on December 17, 1903, 4 miles south of Kitty Hawk, now Kill Devil Hills.

In 1904–1905, the brothers developed the Wright Flyer II, followed by the first truly practical fixed-wing aircraft, the Wright Flyer III. The brothers' breakthrough was their creation of a three-axis control system, which allowed the pilot to control the aircraft effectively and maintain balance. This method remains standard on all types of fixed-wing aircraft.