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NPTC Southeast Convention Road Trip➤
My friend Patty and I travelled to Asheville, North Carolina for the 2023 National Park Travelers Club Convention. The convention rotates to a different region each year. For 2023, it was in the Southeast region. On the way down, during the convention and on the way home we visited nine National Park Service units and some other parks. The first place we visited on our road trip was Booker T. Washington National Monument.
Booker T Washington National Monument ➤
The National Monument commemorates the site in Virginia where Booker T. Washington took his first breath as a free man. The ranger who greeted us was friendly and informative. She started the movie for us and pointed us to the exhibits and the plantation and Jack O Lantern trails. She apologized for sweating. She’d just come from carrying water to the farm animals because the pump at the farm was broken. But, she added, it was no more than Washington had to do when he was enslaved as a little boy on this very plantation.
After the movie about Washington’s remarkable life, we walked the trails. The plantation trail leads past a farm area with some pigs, sheep, chickens and a horse. There are also recreations of the cabin where Washington was born and an outline of the former plantation house. The Jack O Lantern trail leads past the tobacco barn and into the woods with interpretive signs along the way.
Born into slavery in 1856 on a 207-acre tobacco plantation in Southwest Virginia, Booker T. Washington defied daunting odds to become one of the 20th century’s most influential black leaders and educators. The harsh realities of slavery, the African American struggle for education and equality, and the fight for political participation shaped his life choices.
A lifelong advocate of education as the pathway to individual freedom and success, Washington graduated from Hampton Institute. In 1881, he founded Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, emphasizing agricultural and industrial training as its first principal. He passed away at Tuskegee in 1915 at 59 years old.
Southeast Convention Posts➤
- Booker T Washington National Monument
- Guilford Courthouse National Military Park
- Reed Gold Mine State Historic Site
- Museum of the Cherokee Indian
- Great Smoky: Oconaluftee River Trail
- Great Smoky: Mountain Farm Museum
- Blue Ridge Parkway: Waterrock Knob
- Kings Mountain National Military Park
- Cowpens National Battlefield
- Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site
- Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail
- Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Historical Park
- Antietam National Battlefield
Location: 12130 Booker T Washington Hwy, Hardy, Virginia
Designation: National Monument
Date designated/established: April 2, 1956
Date of my visit: August 1, 2023
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