Upper South

The Booth Escape Route

twelve days in April 1865

Open the interactive map →

Drive

Washington → Port Royal

Distance

~95 miles

Time

1 days

Highways

MD 5 · US 301

Avoids

I-95

Region

Upper South

Out the back of Ford's Theatre, over the Navy Yard Bridge and into Southern Maryland's Confederate-sympathizing tobacco country: Booth's twelve-day run is the most documented manhunt of the century, and you can drive it stop for stop. The Surratt tavern's hidden carbines, Dr. Mudd's 4 a.m. house call, four cold days in a pine thicket reading his own reviews, the Potomac crossing, and the tobacco barn site now sitting, perfectly American, in a highway median.

📍 Nine Civil War Trails signs mark the route end to end; the Surratt Society's map is the definitive companion.

The drive, segment by segment

Out of Washington

Ford's Theatre → Surratt House · ~15 mi

The theatre, the Petersen House deathbed, and the sprint over the Navy Yard Bridge into Maryland.

• 🏛️Ford's Theatre & Petersen House — Washington

  The box, the derringer, and the too-short bed across the street where Lincoln died at 7:22 the next morning.

Southern Maryland

Surratt House → Pope's Creek · ~45 mi

The tavern's cache, Mudd's parlor surgery, and the pine thicket wait at Rich Hill.

• 🏛️Surratt House — Clinton

  Mary Surratt's tavern, where the carbines waited in the joists; she became the first woman executed by the federal government for it.

• 🏛️Dr. Mudd House — Waldorf

  Where Mudd set Booth's broken leg at four in the morning. The family-run museum remains, charmingly, on Team Mudd.

• 🏛️Rich Hill & the pine thicket — Bel Alton

  Samuel Cox sent the fugitives into the pines for four freezing days while an agent brought food and newspapers; Booth read his notices and despaired of them.

• 🏛️Pope's Creek crossing — Pope's Creek

  The launch point for the Potomac row, botched once in the dark before succeeding; the wayside maps the whole water crossing.

Virginia & the Barn

the Potomac → Garrett Farm site · ~35 mi

Across the river and up to Port Royal, where the porch turned them away and the barn ended it.

• 🏘️Port Royal — Port Royal

  The Brockenbrough-Peyton house porch where the fugitives were turned away, sending them three miles farther down the road.

• 🛸Garrett Farm site — Port Royal

  The barn where it ended now sits in the US 301 median; the marker stands on the northbound shoulder. 'Useless, useless,' and then the highway.

Worth a detour

• St. Mary's Bryantown — The church where Booth first met Dr. Mudd in 1864, and where Mudd is buried; the plot thickens in the churchyard.
• Captain Billy's, Pope's Creek — Crab houses on the Potomac shore near the crossing point; the traditional place to end the chase with a mallet.