Long Weekend
3 days · ~260 miles · from Williamsburg
The bookends of American history in one Virginia weekend: the first permanent English colony and the Yorktown victory that won independence, then the plantation road to Petersburg and the courthouse where the Civil War ended.
This trip chains: VA 5 & the Colonial Parkway · Lee's Retreat
Historic Jamestowne where it began in 1607, the edge of Colonial Williamsburg, and the Yorktown battlefield where Cornwallis surrendered — the Colonial Parkway between them, no billboards allowed. Overnight Williamsburg.
VA 5 west past Sherwood Forest, Berkeley and Shirley plantations along the James, then Petersburg: Pamplin Park and the trenches where the long siege finally broke. Overnight Petersburg.
Follow the 1865 retreat west — Five Forks, Sailor's Creek, the High Bridge, and Farmville's Moton Museum of a later fight for freedom — to Appomattox Court House, where it all came to an end.