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If you are in the area this weekend, stop on by. This is a preservation event with any proceeds going to the conservation and interpretation of this Civil War landmark.
City sets sights on Civil War buffs
By Emily Battle / Lynchburg News & Advance
June 14, 2004
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In the battle to get on the average Civil War tourist’s travel itinerary, Lynchburg’s position can present a challenge.
While people may trace the war’s final days by driving from Petersburg to Appomattox, they may not make it as far west as Lynchburg.
Similarly, tourists traveling the Shenandoah Valley might get as close as Lexington, where Stonewall Jackson taught and where Robert E. Lee is buried, but they might not make the mountainous drive to the Hill City.
Lately, Greg Starbuck, executive director of the Historic Sandusky Foundation, has been stepping up efforts to link Lynchburg to both of these sites and to raise the city’s profile in the billon-dollar Civil War tourism industry.
“There are other localities with less Civil War history doing more with their history than Lynchburg,” Starbuck said. “We’re sort of in this no-man’s land, but I think that’s going to change because our profile is getting bigger. It’s getting into the consciousness of the Civil War buff and the Civil War tourist.”
Starbuck and local history enthusiasts are hoping that a series of events next weekend to commemorate the 140th anniversary of the Battle of Lynchburg will teach both locals and visitors to the city a few things they didn’t know about Lynchburg’s role in the conflict.
While the Batteau Festival is kicking off downtown, a number of local history sites, including Sandusky, Poplar Forest, Fort Early, Old City Cemetery and several others, will host tours, lectures and demonstrations of what life was like in Lynchburg during the Civil War.
About 800 battle re-enactors will converge on a field off U.S. 460 in Appomattox County to perform daily re-enactments of the 1864 Battle of Lynchburg, in which Gen. Jubal Early kept Union Gen. David Hunter’s forces from taking the strategic supply center that was Civil War Lynchburg.
In the city, living history re-enactors and other local history enthusiasts will try to give visitors an idea of what home life in Lynchburg was like during the conflict.
Jenny West will open her Federal Street bed and breakfast to a group of re-enactors called the Atlantic Guard Soldiers Aid Society, which will recreate the role West’s house played during the Civil War - that of a hospital.
The house was once the home of Lucy Norvell Otey, a Lynchburg woman who, despite resistance from Confederate army doctors, got permission from Jefferson Davis to oversee and reform Lynchburg’s war hospitals.
“She was a woman way before her time,” West said.
Scott Garrett, a local surgeon, will give a lecture at Sandusky on Saturday on Civil War surgery, something that’s been a personal passion for him ever since his wife gave him an antique medical field chest nearly 10 years ago.
“That sort of unleashed the demon in me,” Garrett said. He said a lot of people don’t realize that the modern-day concept of a general hospital was born out of Civil War medicine.
From the history of banjo music to the war’s effect on Lynchburg’s slave population, the weekend will feature a number of topics to highlight the city’s historical resources.
The weekend is being marketed as part of a regional campaign that includes a series of events commemorating the final defeat of Confederate forces in the Shenandoah Valley in 1864.
While Lynchburg technically isn’t part of the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia Civil War Trails Executive Director Mitch Bowman said that building links with popular tourist routes to its east and west is one key to building Lynchburg’s Civil War tourism profile.
“Lynchburg has traditionally been sort of lost in the center of the state in the minds of most Civil War travelers, and I do think that’s changing,” he said. “But it’s not going to happen overnight.”
City Museum Administrator Tom Ledford said one of the biggest things that has happened to boost awareness of the city is the addition of several Civil War Trails markers. The Virginia Tourism Corporation received calls from 84,688 people last year asking for information on the trails program, and Ledford thinks the added markers helped tourists put Lynchburg in a perspective they wouldn’t have had otherwise.
“The city played a larger role than most people realize,” Ledford said. “But because you didn’t have a major battle here … people can’t understand where it fits in.”
Lynchburg’s position on the river and its railroad access made it an important supply center and hospital hub during the war. Starbuck said that after the 1864 Battle of the Wilderness, Lynchburg’s population doubled because of the tens of thousands of wounded soldiers that entered town by rail.
He also thinks that a growing interest in aspects of the war deeper than the big, high-profile battles, brought on largely from Ken Burns’ popular documentary of the war, have led more travelers off the beaten path of war history.
“It is still a challenge, but we’re doing better because these programs have made people interested in the lesser aspects of the Civil War,” Ledford said.
Starbuck hopes next weekend’s events will awaken people’s knowledge of Lynchburg’s role in the war. He sees the events as the start of a multi-year campaign to increase awareness of Lynchburg as a Civil War tourism destination.
“For us to promote ourselves as a Civil War destination, we need to publicize all aspects of our civil war history,” he said. “It’s not just the battle. It’s the hospital center. It’s the homefront.”
Respectfully,
Greg Starbuck
City sets sights on Civil War buffs
By Emily Battle / Lynchburg News & Advance
June 14, 2004
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the battle to get on the average Civil War tourist’s travel itinerary, Lynchburg’s position can present a challenge.
While people may trace the war’s final days by driving from Petersburg to Appomattox, they may not make it as far west as Lynchburg.
Similarly, tourists traveling the Shenandoah Valley might get as close as Lexington, where Stonewall Jackson taught and where Robert E. Lee is buried, but they might not make the mountainous drive to the Hill City.
Lately, Greg Starbuck, executive director of the Historic Sandusky Foundation, has been stepping up efforts to link Lynchburg to both of these sites and to raise the city’s profile in the billon-dollar Civil War tourism industry.
“There are other localities with less Civil War history doing more with their history than Lynchburg,” Starbuck said. “We’re sort of in this no-man’s land, but I think that’s going to change because our profile is getting bigger. It’s getting into the consciousness of the Civil War buff and the Civil War tourist.”
Starbuck and local history enthusiasts are hoping that a series of events next weekend to commemorate the 140th anniversary of the Battle of Lynchburg will teach both locals and visitors to the city a few things they didn’t know about Lynchburg’s role in the conflict.
While the Batteau Festival is kicking off downtown, a number of local history sites, including Sandusky, Poplar Forest, Fort Early, Old City Cemetery and several others, will host tours, lectures and demonstrations of what life was like in Lynchburg during the Civil War.
About 800 battle re-enactors will converge on a field off U.S. 460 in Appomattox County to perform daily re-enactments of the 1864 Battle of Lynchburg, in which Gen. Jubal Early kept Union Gen. David Hunter’s forces from taking the strategic supply center that was Civil War Lynchburg.
In the city, living history re-enactors and other local history enthusiasts will try to give visitors an idea of what home life in Lynchburg was like during the conflict.
Jenny West will open her Federal Street bed and breakfast to a group of re-enactors called the Atlantic Guard Soldiers Aid Society, which will recreate the role West’s house played during the Civil War - that of a hospital.
The house was once the home of Lucy Norvell Otey, a Lynchburg woman who, despite resistance from Confederate army doctors, got permission from Jefferson Davis to oversee and reform Lynchburg’s war hospitals.
“She was a woman way before her time,” West said.
Scott Garrett, a local surgeon, will give a lecture at Sandusky on Saturday on Civil War surgery, something that’s been a personal passion for him ever since his wife gave him an antique medical field chest nearly 10 years ago.
“That sort of unleashed the demon in me,” Garrett said. He said a lot of people don’t realize that the modern-day concept of a general hospital was born out of Civil War medicine.
From the history of banjo music to the war’s effect on Lynchburg’s slave population, the weekend will feature a number of topics to highlight the city’s historical resources.
The weekend is being marketed as part of a regional campaign that includes a series of events commemorating the final defeat of Confederate forces in the Shenandoah Valley in 1864.
While Lynchburg technically isn’t part of the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia Civil War Trails Executive Director Mitch Bowman said that building links with popular tourist routes to its east and west is one key to building Lynchburg’s Civil War tourism profile.
“Lynchburg has traditionally been sort of lost in the center of the state in the minds of most Civil War travelers, and I do think that’s changing,” he said. “But it’s not going to happen overnight.”
City Museum Administrator Tom Ledford said one of the biggest things that has happened to boost awareness of the city is the addition of several Civil War Trails markers. The Virginia Tourism Corporation received calls from 84,688 people last year asking for information on the trails program, and Ledford thinks the added markers helped tourists put Lynchburg in a perspective they wouldn’t have had otherwise.
“The city played a larger role than most people realize,” Ledford said. “But because you didn’t have a major battle here … people can’t understand where it fits in.”
Lynchburg’s position on the river and its railroad access made it an important supply center and hospital hub during the war. Starbuck said that after the 1864 Battle of the Wilderness, Lynchburg’s population doubled because of the tens of thousands of wounded soldiers that entered town by rail.
He also thinks that a growing interest in aspects of the war deeper than the big, high-profile battles, brought on largely from Ken Burns’ popular documentary of the war, have led more travelers off the beaten path of war history.
“It is still a challenge, but we’re doing better because these programs have made people interested in the lesser aspects of the Civil War,” Ledford said.
Starbuck hopes next weekend’s events will awaken people’s knowledge of Lynchburg’s role in the war. He sees the events as the start of a multi-year campaign to increase awareness of Lynchburg as a Civil War tourism destination.
“For us to promote ourselves as a Civil War destination, we need to publicize all aspects of our civil war history,” he said. “It’s not just the battle. It’s the hospital center. It’s the homefront.”
Respectfully,
Greg Starbuck