Places To Visit

The Williamsburg Bray School, established by the London-based Anglican charity known as the Associates of Dr. Bray, was one of the earliest institutions dedicated to Black education in North America. Over the school's 14 years of operation, from 1760... Read More

This historic landmark was built ca. 1800 on Linville Creek by pioneer Abraham Breneman, who migrated from Pennsylvania in 1770. It is a four-story brick water-powered mill that is the only pre-Civil War mill remaining in Rockingham County with all t... Read More

The Brethren & Mennonite Heritage Center (BMHC) shares and celebrates the historical and spiritual legacies of Brethren and Mennonites in the Shenandoah Valley. Coming from the same communities in Europe and Pennsylvania, Brethren and Mennonites have... Read More

Bridgewater, in Rockingham County, is one of the largest and best-preserved of a string of towns located along the Shenandoah Valley's former Harrisonburg—Warm Springs Turnpike. It began as a river port for neighboring farms to float their goods do... Read More

Brightwell's Mill has been a staple of the Lynchburg area since before the 1820's, having been rebuilt in the August of 1942 following historical flooding, which breached the dam, and destroyed most of the mill. Since its establishment, it has serve... Read More

The Bristol Sign, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, stands over State Street, which runs through the middle of Bristol. One half is in Bristol, Tennessee, and the other half is in Bristol, Virginia. In 1910, the Bristol Gas and... Read More

Occupying a conspicuous location on the edge of Bristol's commercial district, the Bristol Railroad Station, originally known as the Bristol Union Railway Station, was constructed in 1902. The stone-and-brick structure is one of the last surviving ex... Read More

The diminutive proportions of this colonial plantation house, in Essex County's Occupacia-Rappahannock Rural Historic District, may result from the fact that it was built for a woman, Sarah Taliaferro Brooke, who supervised its construction. Brooke's... Read More

Once a defining feature of rural America, the general store is rapidly becoming an endangered architectural species. Such buildings formerly dotted the countryside with regularity. Most, however, have vanished, and most remaining ones are abandoned. ... Read More

A relic of a leading Virginia industry, this plain but substantially built brick building is perhaps the state's best-preserved antebellum tobacco factory. Located in the heart of Virginia's bright-leaf tobacco belt, the two-story Brooklyn Tobacco Fa... Read More

The earliest portion of the galleried frame Brooks-Brown House was built in the 1830s and was later expanded with several additions. Its original occupant was Andrew Brooks, a Franklin County farmer who served in the Virginia House of Delegates from ... Read More

A long-standing tradition maintains that Brown's Ferry was the birthplace of William Mahone (1826-1895), the colorful Confederate general who achieved fame during the 1864 siege of Petersburg. Known as the "Hero of the Crater," Mahone closed the gap ... Read More

On a remote edge of the Eastern Shore's broad oceanside marshes in Northampton County is the surprisingly urbane Federal-style residence of Brownsville, built in 1806 for John Upshur. Upshur's ancestor John Browne, from whom the property derives its ... Read More

The early movement to provide women access to higher education is symbolized in the cluster of buildings that survive in Buckingham County from the Buckingham Female Collegiate Institute, the first chartered college for women in Virginia. Opened in 1... Read More

Buckshoal Farm was the birthplace and favorite residence of William M. Tuck (1896-1983), one of Virginia's most popular 20th-century governors. Elected in 1945, his term is remembered for his effect on labor-management relationships. He was instrumen... Read More