Qualla: Appomattox Court House National Historical Park

Appomattox Court House National Historical Park: Introduction

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PLBthetoonist, CC BY-SA 4.0. On the morning of April 9, 1865, a Confederate officer rode toward Union lines carrying a white towel. Within hours, Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant sat across from each other in the parlor of Wilmer McLean's brick farmhouse, and the bloodiest war in American history was, for all practical purposes, over. The village where this happened was already fading. Bypassed by the railroad a decade earlier, Appomattox Court House had been losing residents and businesses since 1854. History chose this quiet, declining crossroads in central Virginia to stage one of the nation's most consequential moments -- a place whose very name, borrowed from the Apumetec tribe and the river whose headwaters rise nearby, would become synonymous with the end of the Confederacy.

Image: PLBthetoonist | CC BY-SA 4.0

Appomattox Court House National Historical Park: From Clover Hill to County Seat

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Doug Coldwell, CC BY-SA 3.0. Before it became a word every American schoolchild learns, Appomattox Court House was simply Clover Hill -- a small stop along the Richmond-to-Lynchburg stagecoach road. When Appomattox County was carved from parts of four neighboring counties and established on February 8, 1845,...

Image: Doug Coldwell | CC BY-SA 3.0

Appomattox Court House National Historical Park: Nine Days in April

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Noahsdad222, CC BY-SA 4.0. In early April 1865, Lee's Army of Northern Virginia was in retreat, pursued relentlessly by Grant's forces. Exhausted, outnumbered, and cut off from supplies, Lee's troops made a final desperate attack at Appomattox Court House on the morning of April 9 -- and failed. That after...

Image: Noahsdad222 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Appomattox Court House National Historical Park: A Village Preserved in Amber

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Doug Coldwell, CC BY-SA 3.0. The war's end brought no revival to Appomattox Court House. The village continued its slow decline. When an 1892 courthouse fire destroyed the county records, officials moved the county seat to the railroad town that had stolen its commerce, now called simply Appomattox. The old ...

Image: Doug Coldwell | CC BY-SA 3.0

Appomattox Court House National Historical Park: Walking the Ground

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Muhranoff, CC BY-SA 4.0. The park offers both a driving tour and hiking trails that wind through the landscape where the final act of the Civil War played out. Interpretive signs mark the site of Lee's headquarters and the positions of the last artillery pieces fired by Confederate guns. A Confederate ce...

Image: Muhranoff | CC BY-SA 4.0