The AAF Tank Museum is a living memorial dedicated to the Tank and Cavalry soldiers of the world. Before 1981 some of the artifacts that make up the AAF Tank Museum was a private collection belonging to Mr. William Gasser. Mr. Gasser felt that his co... Read More

Located in southern Pittsylvania County near the North Carolina border, Berry Hill is a remarkably complete Southside plantation grouping with a sprawling, much-evolved dwelling house and numerous outbuildings. The unusually high number of support st... Read More

More recently known as "Streetcar Named Desire," this engaging example of 20th-century Americana, formerly Bill's Diner, began life in the mid-1920s as a functioning streetcar in Reidsville, N.C. Bill Fretwell of Chatham took advantage of the elimina... Read More

The mid-1920s Danville Car No. 66 ended its transportation duties in 1938 when that city began converting to bus service. Salvaged from the scrappers, the trolley car was converted into a diner by the resourceful Burnett brothers, Henry, Frank, and J... Read More

The clerk's office was built around 1770 (finished about 1771) as Callands served as Pittsylvania County's first county seat from 1767-1777. It has been restored and is available for tours with sufficient advance notice.Precious American Revolutionar... Read More

The linear district includes the buildings of governance for the county seat of Pittsylvania County, commercial buildings dating from the late 19th to mid-20th century, and residential neighborhoods constructed between 1807 and 1950. Included in the ... Read More

The Chatham Southern Railway Depot was erected between 1918 and 1919. The depot is a well-known landmark, owing in part to the importance of the railroad in the post-1850 history of the town and region. As the central transportation hub of Chatham an... Read More

The Gosney Store, located at a rural crossroads in Pittsylvania County about six miles east of Danville, started out ca. 1898 as a one-room frame schoolhouse in a different location. Known as Union School, the building was moved to its current locat... Read More

In Southside Virginia's Pittsylvania County, the Gretna Commercial Historic District took shape with the arrival of the Lynchburg and Danville Railroad through the area between 1872 and 1874. The railroad swelled a settlement known as Franklin Juncti... Read More

Located in Pittsylvania County's town of Chatham and established in 1909 as the Chatham Training School, a prestigious private, males-only parochial school, Hargrave Military Academy evolved into a more comprehensive military-focused educational inst... Read More

Hill Grove School provided primary education for students in the local African American community before public school integration occurred in Pittsylvania County in the 1960s. In 1912, Alec Cook and his wife, Emma, donated a one-acre lot near the ru... Read More

The John and Nancy Yeatts House is a finely crafted and well-preserved vernacular log dwelling with a handsome stone chimney. The one-story-with-garret house was built for John and Nancy Yeatts probably around the time of their marriage in 1808. A se... Read More

This prehistoric site along the Roanoke River contains well-preserved archaeological material dating from the Late Woodland period. The site is characterized by high integrity of cultural features including midden, bone and seed remains, pottery shar... Read More

Named for nearby Little Cherrystone Creek, this Pittsylvania County farm has a dwelling with two distinct and contrasting sections of exceptional regional importance. Its one-story frame wing was probably standing before Thomas Hill Wooding acquired ... Read More

Craftsman Enoch Johnson built Locust Hill, a two-and-a-half-story Swiss Gothic-style Victorian cottage, for Samuel Marion Stone between 1859 and 1861. Its steeply pitched roof incorporates two central chimneys and four gables decorated in ornamental ... Read More

Virginia's southern Piedmont experienced significant agricultural prosperity between 1800 and the Civil War. Evidence of its wealth can be seen in a group of large houses that formed the nuclei of vast plantations. While a few are stylish Greek and G... Read More

Located on a ridge above the Dan River in Pittsylvania County, Oak Ridge is a Greek Revival/Classical Revival house with many notable stylistic and decorative features. The house was built around 1840 for planter George Adams and his wife, Justina. T... Read More

Completed in 1812 to serve the 1783 Pittsylvania courthouse, the former clerk's office is the oldest public building in the town of Chatham. Built to be the chief repository of the county's official records, it served from 1813 to 1852 under the char... Read More

Nearby to the east once stood the community of Peytonsburg a part of Halifax County when the county was formed in 1752. Peytonsburg was incorporated as a town in 1759 by the Virginia General Assembly and became part of Pittsylvania County in 1766. Du... Read More

Philip Craft House is a simple hall-parlor-plan dwelling built in the early-19th-century with unusual use of rounded bricks that cap the top of the water table and course the top of the chimney haunches. Of German ancestry, Philip Craft married into ... Read More

This antebellum courthouse stands as a landmark to the African American struggle for civil rights in the post Civil-War era. Judge J. D. Coles's attempt in 1878 to exclude blacks from jury duty here led to the Supreme Court case of Ex parte Virginia.... Read More

In 2001, with Norfolk Southern planning to demolish the 1918 Southern Railway Depot in Chatham, the Pittsylvania Historical Society raised funds and purchased it. At that time, the depot was in a serious state of disrepair. The Pittsylvania County... Read More

The Ringgold Rail Trail is a 5.5 mile walking and biking trail that follows part of the right-of-way of the old railroad of the same name. Currently, about 2 miles of the trail is open to the public; the rest of the trail was rendered unusable by Tro... Read More

Seven Springs Farm is notable for its well-preserved early 19th-century log structures that have survived through continuous occupation of the property and careful maintenance of the buildings. Representing the variety of domestic log buildings that ... Read More

"Sharswood", established around 1853 and was a Gothic style design by New York architect A.J. Davis.... Read More

Welcome to Simpson Funeral Museum in Historic Chatham, Virginia. Prepare to go on a journey through time as we take you from Ancient Egypt's mummification process of the Pharaohs to today's modern burial practices. We have award winning antique hears... Read More

Southern Pittsylvania County's only public secondary school for African American students during the mid-20th century, Southside High School opened at another site in 1948. In 1953, it continued operations in a new two-story brick building constructe... Read More

The Thomas Claiborne Creasy House in Pittsylvania County's Town of Gretna is where Thomas C. Creasy resided during a career that brought him wealth and saw him operating a mercantile warehouse, owning numerous parcels of land, and rising to local pro... Read More

Completed in 1862 for Samuel Pannill Wilson, an ardent secessionist who raised troops for the Confederacy, Windsor's Italianate mansion and collection of outbuildings form the last of the elaborate antebellum plantation complexes built in Pittsylvani... Read More

One of the finest and most prestigious historic homes in rural Southside Virginia, Woodlawn has appeared in local and regional history books. The Federal-style, two-part, story-and-a-half frame dwelling was built in two phases during the first half o... Read More

A key landmark in Virginia's vernacular architecture, Yates Tavern in Pittsylvania County illustrates the translation of the 17th-century Tidewater hall-parlor house form into 19th-century upland building forms. Its two-room plan, exterior-end chimne... Read More