My first stop on my way southwestward from Charlottesville is
Appomattox Court House National Historic Site, the spot in rural central Virginia
where Ulysses Grant and his Union troops caught up with Lee and his fleeing Confederates
after battles around Richmond and Petersburg . The spot where Lee surrendered to
Grant is a large house, the McLean Home, across from the courthouse in
Appomattox, officially ending the Civil War after four long years and a couple
days of minor fighting in the area. The focus of the historic site is the
buildings of the village of about 150 people at the time of the Civil War, the
megalopolis of the county with no other significant settlements at that time. The
town of Appomattox was rebuilt a few miles away.

Plenty of old photographs show that almost everything at the
site is a recreation dating from the 1930s onwards when Franklin Roosevelt
signed the legislation to create the NPS unit to commemorate the site where the
war ended. WPA historians, archaeologists, and architects researched and drew
up plans, and the CCC went to work recreating an 1860s village that had fallen
into ruin. The current town of Appomattox was rebuilt several miles from the
pre-Civil War town. OK, having seen Appomattox I’m done with Civil War sites
for a while.