Booker T. Washington National Monument

Booker T. Washington was born on this tobacco farm in 1856 and spent the first nine years of his life as a slave. When a Union officer visited the farm in 1865 and read the Emancipation Proclamation to the farm owners and the slaves, Booker's mother gathered her children and they walked 225 miles to West Virginia to join her husband. Booker was finally able to go to school. By the time he was twenty he had become a teacher himself and five year later, he was chosen to head the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. The only buildings on the grounds were a rundown church and a shack but Washington's tireless efforts built the school into a large university offering a wide range of courses. 

The monument has a small museum, a reconstructed slave house, outbuildings, garden, tobacco field, animal pens, and a 1 1/2 mile trail. The exhibits in the museum are geared towards school groups. There's a theater where a short video about Washington's life can be viewed.

The museum and theater are accessible. The path to the slave house is paved and accessible. The path to the barn and animal pens is very steep. The 1 1/2 mile trail is gravel and natural surface and not accessible. 

 The parking lot has two long spaces for buses or RVs. Monument  37.11993, -79.73219