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Friday 1pm - 4pm Saturday 1pm - 4pm Sunday 1pm - 4pm

Rockbridge Historical Society, 101 E. Washington Street, Lexington, VA (2026)

06/02/2026

🚴 🇺🇸 "BIKECENTENNIAL Open House": June 3, 3-6 PM, at the RHS Museum.

🗓️ WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, join bike lovers, local history enthusiasts, and civic officials for this special event to look back through five-and-more centuries of Virginia history from a 2-wheeled perspective, and to celebrate the environmental beauty and recreational opportunities that our stretch of the Blue Ridge and Shenandoah Valley offers to so many visitors, and residents, alike.

Our FREE Open House is specifically timed to welcome to Lexington a group of three dozen cyclists who are currently wheeling their way across the state, from Wytheville to Williamsburg, to “recreationally re-create” that historic event: a spirited 50th anniversary encore that dynamically adds to this year’s broader VA250 celebrations. Their visit also pays tribute to the installation of new bike lanes in downtown Lexington last Fall to provide more accessibility and safety to everyday riders in our region.

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🚲 See https://bike76-va.vt.domains/home/podcast/ to explore the innovative digital project, 30-episode podcast, maps, and historic narratives that illuminate the "1976 Virginia Bikecentennial."

50 Rockbridge miles of the 4250-mile TransAmerican US76 Bicycle Trail run through our area, including Main Street, Lexington: a lasting trail established as part of the memorable Bicentennial celebrations linking 1776 and 1976.

At the Museum, you can now explore the special commemorative exhibit on this historic state and national enterprise that we'll have on show through the summer, before touring it to local schools, libraries, and recreational sites. In the attached images, you can preview some of the infographics and posters that ground our featured exhibit, including this panel spotlighting Rockbridge County.

⛰️ On your own wheels, or through our displays and online cues, you can enjoy new perspectives on our local histories, with spotlights on Natural Bridge, Irish Creek, Historic Lexington, and the Blue Ridge Parkway ... including the steepest 4-mile climb in the entire transcontinental trail, huffing up from Gertie's Country Store in Vesuvius to the Blue Ridge summits at Tye River Gap.

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Take this unique opportunity to talk with some of these statewide thru-riders, including Bike76VA Project Director and Virginia Tech Dean Tom Ewing.

And share your suggestions with us as RHS and Rockbridge250 continue planning three commemorative 'Community Rides' this summer and Fall: goldilocks'd from the July 4 Children's Bike Parade that follows VA Route 76, to the river roads and hills and hollows that track our natural treasures, at your own inviting pace!

Rockbridge Historical Society
Lexington, Virginia and the Rockbridge Area Tourism
VA250 - American Revolution 250 Commission
Main Street Lexington
City of Lexington, Virginia Government
The News-Gazette, Lexington, Va

05/27/2026

Tomorrow, Wed. May 27, 6 PM: Join us at the Lexington Library for our next monthly gathering of REVOLUTIONARY BOOKS, 1776-2026.

For this selection, we will turn to the richly detailed account of a free Black community on the Appomattox River near Farmville, as provided by Melvin Patrick Ely's prizewinning chronicle:

"ISRAEL ON THE APPOMATTOX: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s through the Civil War."

You can sample the introduction and opening chapters online HERE:

https://tinyurl.com/Israel-Appomattox

The discussion will cap our monthlong series on "PATHWAYS TO FREEDOM" exploring the experiences of generations of free Black People in Rockbridge and Virginia, before the Civil War.

In addition to our screening of HARRIET for Revolutionary Films, and the Appalachian Trail History Hike to the Brown Mountain Creek Freedmen's Settlement, this innovative series built around our 6-week exhibition the Virginia Museum of History and Culture's traveling exhibition "UN/BOUND" at the RHS Museum and Lexington Library. Most distinctively, for our local history mission, these themes and patterns were highlighted by the joint presentation by Cinder Stanton and Larry Spurgeon that sharpened the lens on Rockbridge experiences of free Black individuals and families in Rockbridge, from 1778-1865.

As with most of our gatherings, we'll start with some short video interviews with the author to set the stage, inviting discussion and core issues on the questions, however much you may have read, or remain keen to read ahead!

Rockbridge Historical Society
Rockbridge Regional Libraries
VA250 - American Revolution 250 Commission
Virginia Museum of History & Culture

05/24/2026

Join RHS and the Rockbridge community for Monday's Memorial Day annual ceremonies at 10 AM, at Lexington's Court House Square: the first since last month's re-dedication, and the broader opening of its welcoming civic space.

After the morning ceremonies conclude, walk the half block down E. Washington Street and visit the RHS Museum during special Memorial Day hours (11 AM-1 PM), as we open the holiday doors to our residents and visitors gathered on Main Street.

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Once Court House Square's new historic signs have been fabricated and installed, we'll tell you more about the Rockbridge Historical Society's role in helping preserve and promote the local history that's continued to evolve for over two and a half centuries since the settlement of this 'Crossroads Community,' in the late 18th-century Valley frontier.

Pictured, see the template for the new interpretive sign that will stand next to the Veterans Memorial, one of 3 to be installed in the square's plaza (text and images developed by RHS Trustee Arthur Bartenstein and Executive Director Eric Wilson, with graphic design by Rebecca Logan and Jesse Lyons for Main Street Lexington)

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At the Museum, as you browse our displays and artifacts highlighting the era of America's Founding -- as well as those marking the last benchmark celebrations of the 1976 Bicentennial -- you can fittingly extend the tributes to those men and women from this area who have served and sacrificed to ensure the security and vitality of Lexington and Rockbridge, since they were jointly established in 1778, during the heart of the Revolutionary War.

We're eager to welcome you back to our Museum -- and to hear what matters most to you about our community, and our country, at this signature moment in national history -- after we gather together at our city and county's central seal, in due commemorative witness.

Warm wishes to you and yours on Memorial Day, in the heart of this historic 250th year of American Independence.

Rockbridge Historical Society
Main Street Lexington
Lexington, Virginia and the Rockbridge Area Tourism
City of Lexington, Virginia Government
City of Buena Vista, Virginia - Government
Rockbridge County, Virginia - Government
VA250 - American Revolution 250 Commission

05/21/2026

We'll be taking a run at our historic monologues in the cemetery at 530, with Oak Groves grand canopy to shade the sprinkles.

If it's raining hard, and you don't see us in the central corridor, head to the Piovano Room at the Public Library, in case we need to shift, mid stream!!

Hope to see you for this special moment in local history!

05/21/2026

Tonight, at 5:30 PM, rain or shine, join RHS & and students and faculty from the WLU Theater Dept, and Community Based Learning to listen and learn from some newly-embodied "Stories of the Past~Voices for Today."

Plan to meet us at the entrance of Oak Grove Cemetery tonight at 5:30 (if the skies have opened, we'll direct you from there to our rain-site at the Lexington Library, a block and a half away at 138 S. Main Street).

The early evening's calm shade offers a fitting stage for these actors' retrospective reflections, inviting you to move through some creative, distinctive journeys into local history. The immersive production is structured around a series of historically-grounded monologues at the gravesites of three interpreted figures whose first-person voices from the past will be newly conjured to life, based on authentic archival research:

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**Rev. Daniel Blain (1838-1906) (grandson and namesake to another early professor of languages at Washington College, and late 18th century minister to Timber Ridge and Oxford Presbyterian Churches) began his studies in divinity at Union Cemetery in 1860, returning to complete his degree four months after he was paroled at Appomattox, completing his half-decade's service in the Rockbridge Artillery.

**Professor William MacFarland Patton (1845-1905) graduated from VMI in 1865, a recent veteran of the Battle of New Market, then hired just two years later to teach Civil Engineering for over two decades. Evocatively, Patton kept a series of “dream journals” now housed in the VMI archives.

**Capt. Greenlee Letcher (1867-1954) was the 11th and last child of Virginia’s Civil War Governor and Lexington native John Letcher. Over three decades after graduating from VMI in 1886, and W&L Law in 1888, Greenlee served in France in his early 50s, returning to Lexington as the community's most heralded veteran of the Great War, as Commander of the Rockbridge Battery, later elected to the VA General Assembly.

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Beyond the figures they've selected to dramatize, take some time for your own survey of the two-and-a-half centuries of local citizens who've been interred there. We encourage you to do so, in situ, and in person, before and after the performances, in the quiet of the cemetery itself.

Virtually, you can also follow this link to explore the remarkable, searchable census of (then) Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery Census, as produced by Tom Kastner in 2013, with support from Washington & Lee Special Collections Library, the Rockbridge Historical Society, Preservation Virginia, and the City of Lexington. With over 6,400 burials inventoried at his completion, it was recently digitized by W&L Digital Humanities Librarian Mackenzie Brooks, now free for download, and helpfully term-searchable by dates, family names and relatives, types of burial markers, occupation, and military service.

sjcemetery.wlu.edu/index.html

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Rockbridge Historical Society
W&L Community-Based Learning
Washington and Lee University Department of Theater, Dance and Film Studies
Washington and Lee University
VA250 - American Revolution 250 Commission
The News-Gazette, Lexington, Va
Rockbridge Regional Libraries
City of Lexington, Virginia Government
City of Buena Vista, Virginia - Government
Rockbridge County, Virginia - Government

05/20/2026

Friends, Rockbridge, Countrymen ... lend us your Swag!

*GotMemories ... from the 1976 Bicentennial (as we now approach America's -- say it all together now -- Semiquincentennial in 2026?

We'd love to draw from family scrapbooks and business records and promotions. School yearbooks and photos, and church archives -- with many a local church hosting some kind of Revolutionary pageant with hand-sewn petticoats and bonnets and leggings and flags!

See the posted image here, as we are partnering with Lexington's News-Gazette for this landmark moment to welcome your own contributions to share with our local community -- anecdotes, photos, mementos -- whether published in the paper, to be posted through oru own Social Media, or if and as you wish, contributed to the standing Rockbridge Historical Society Collections to enrich the community-sourced archive we've stewarded for near 100 years ourselves ... keep the clock running til our own Centennial Celebrations, come 2039!?!

Reach out to us at [email protected] or [email protected] ...
.. and tell your family and friends, to do the same!

Rockbridge Historical Society
The News-Gazette, Lexington, Va
Lexington, Virginia and the Rockbridge Area Tourism
City of Lexington, Virginia Government
City of Buena Vista, Virginia - Government
Rockbridge County, Virginia - Government
Rockbridge Regional Libraries
VA250 - American Revolution 250 Commission

05/19/2026

Get Yer @250 on!! And join us again at Natrual Bridge State Park, today and tomorrow, May 19-20, 10AM-6PM.

Fun stuff yesterday in the shadow of Natural Bridge, purchased by Thomas Jefferson on July 5, 1774; memorably described by him as a "Public Trust," before becoming Rockbridge County's namesake in 1778; and most recently, serving the value of both natural and historic preservation, being designated as Virginia's 37th State Park in 2016.

With thanks to the Rockbridge250 Advisory Committee, and NBSP Park Manager Jim Jones for hosting, we welcomed a sweep of local and national visitors taking in the first of our three-day stand. They enjoyed the special opportunity to explore the VA250 Mobile Museum as it tours statewide. Along with curated displays by the Rockbridge Historical Society focused on Thomas Jefferson's ownership of the Bridge and Monticello, and the 1976 Bikecentennial: the 4,000-mile TransAmerican trail that still brings cyclists through 50 miles of Rockbridge and Main Street, Lexington.

While standard admission applies to the park itself, the mobile museum's exhibits are free and open to the public, along with the RHS displays in the Visitor Center lobby.

VA250 - American Revolution 250 Commission
Rockbridge Historical Society
Lexington, Virginia and the Rockbridge Area Tourism
Rockbridge County, Virginia - Government
City of Lexington, Virginia Government
City of Buena Vista, Virginia - Government
Virginia State Parks
Friends of Natural Bridge State Park
Thomas Jefferson's Monticello

05/17/2026

This Thursday (5:30 PM, Oak Grove Cemetery): Come learn about the local past -- in dramatic fashion -- thanks to a group of Washington & Lee Theater students that RHS has been working with in their Community-Based Learning class this Spring Term, led by Visiting Assistant Professor of Theater, Suzanne Delle

Over the course of this week, we'll share more details about the different projects through which they've researched a range of notable and less familiar figures from Rockbridge history.

In their 4-week theater intensive, they've narrowed their focus to spotlight three residents from 18th, 19th, and 20th century Lexington, drawing on a range of methods and resources: archival research; a visit to the RHS Museum; interactive rehearsals and critiques; graphic design; and the shaping of original, dramatically embodied monologues as they "transform Oak Grove Cemetery into a living space of memory and storytelling through an immersive site-specific performance."

Thanks to these thoughtful and talented undergraduates, first and foremost, for their concentrated, creative work over these past weeks;
.. to Professor Suzanne Delle for her grounding vision and guidance;
.. to Seth McCormick-Goodhart and colleagues at W&L Special Collections Library, longtime stewards of RHS own collections of historic papers and photographs;
.. and to Alessandra Dickovick and the W&L Office of Community-Based Learning for yet another collaborative partnership with RHS in this enterprise. Over the past decade, we've been fortunate to work with your staff, faculty, and students: authentically extending our mission in lifelong learning, on and beyond our area campuses, while contributing lastingly to the preservation and promotion of local history.

More to follow in the days ahead, as we preview some contexts on the monologues they'll creatively constellate at the cemetery!

Rockbridge Historical Society
Washington and Lee University
W&L Community-Based Learning
Washington and Lee University Library
Washington and Lee University Department of Theater, Dance and Film Studies
VA250 - American Revolution 250 Commission
Lexington, Virginia and the Rockbridge Area Tourism
City of Lexington, Virginia Government

05/15/2026

Saturday, May 16: 10 AM!! Meet RHS, and expert archaeologists, US Forest Service rangers, and Natural Bridge Appalachian Trail Club volunteers to explore the habits and habitats of local history. We will head south on the A.T. from Long Mountain Wayside (Route 60, 9 mi east of Buena Vista), to the site of the former Brown Mountain Creek Freedmen's Settlement (1865-1920). You'll also have the chance to see and hear about the newly engineered single log-stringer bridge put in last year: an impressive engineering feat, no less than conservation asset.

The descent-and-return hike along the A.T. (ca. 5 miles) is well-maintained, if relatively steep. After about an hour's walk, our main interpretive presentations will be shared over a lunchbreak at the Brown Mountain Creek Freedmen's Settlement and bridge-crossing. From there, you have some options as to how you might choose to return, by climbing back up the same way, or looping via a longer, if more graded route up a fire road, back to Route 60.

**Freedmen's Village: 2.2-mile descent, from the trailhead (4.4 mi. down and back up)

** New Single Log-Stringer Bridge: 2.8-mile descent from the trailhead (5.6 miles down and back up)

**Swapping Camp Creek Road: 3.9-mile descent from the trailhead (then able to walk back up on a longer, graded loop along the fire road (ca. 7 miles total); a nearby parking area at the bottom of the fire road also affords you an option to pre-arrange car shuttles from the nearby parking site, back up to Route 60, although road conditions may be rough and require good clearance)

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We invite you to explore this terrain for the first time, or again, with new neighbors, and enriched by the fresh perspectives of seasoned interpretive guides who will illuminate some of this area's social, archaeological, and environmental histories.

** Don Ga***rd, Washington & Lee University Research Archaeologist and Instructor in Anthropology

**Megan Martin, United States Forest Service Ranger (Glenwood-Pedlar District) & 2024 Appalachian Trail Conservancy Virginia Regional Partner of the Year

**Eric Wilson, Rockbridge Historical Society Executive Director and Regional Co-Chair, Rockbridge-VA250

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For the transcript of an oral history interview with Taft Hughes (1909-1999), the oldest living former resident of the Brown Mountain Creek Community:

https://nbatc.org/history.htm

Rockbridge Historical Society
Appalachian Trail Conservancy
U.S. Forest Service
U.S. Forest Service - George Washington and Jefferson National Forest
Friends of Natural Bridge State Park
Washington and Lee University
VA250 - American Revolution 250 Commission
Lexington, Virginia and the Rockbridge Area Tourism

05/11/2026

📽 Ahead of Tuesday night's free REVOLUTIONARY FILMS screening of "HARRIET" (PG-13, 6 PM, 5/12, Lexington Library): I'll flag two new prizewinning biographical accounts of Tubman I've been enjoying myself.

Together, they situate her more broadly-known achievements in leading enslaved people North to freedom, by fronting fresh new political, spiritual & environmental contexts.

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NIGHT FLYER: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People, by Tiya Miles

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2024/06/what-harriet-tubman-did-with-the-rest-of-her-life-night-flyer/

COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War, by Edda Fields-Black

https://charlestonmag.com/features/combee_edda_fields_black_s_new_book_about_harriet_tubman_sheds_light_on_her_service_as_a

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This impressive pair of deeply researched narratives highlight Tubman's range of roles and experiences that supported but also extended beyond her continued risks and sacrifices as a "Conductor" on the Underground Railroad, extending more conventional biographical accounts to emphasize:

🙏 Her 'spiritual commitments,' crediting the religious dimensions of her mysterious visions and seizures, along with her own 'self-baptism' of sorts. After emancipating herself and arriving in Philadelphia, she chose a new name for herself, replacing her birthname, Araminta "Minty" Ross, for "Harriet" (in a nod to her mother, Harriet "Rit" Green) and "Tubman" (the surname of her husband John, a free man of color whom she'd married in 1844).

🌳 Her carefully attuned environmental consciousness before and through the Civil War, anchoring her capacity to strategically and sensitively read the nuances of landscape that provided their own opportune 'Pathways to Freedom,' whether through the Chesapeake marshes and waterways of her native Eastern Shore, or the coastal thickets of South Carolina.

✨🎖"General Tubman's" less-recognized military exploits, as she led Union gunboats in the Combahee River Raid, June 1-2,1863. The first American woman to lead an armed military expedition, she helped liberate more than 750 slaves who fled local rice plantations in what Fields-Black calls "one of the greatest slave rebellions in the New World." In 2024, Tubman was posthumously named a one-star brigadier general in the Maryland National Guard.

See you Tomorrow, at the Movie!!

Rockbridge Historical Society

06/02/2026

05/27/2026

05/24/2026

05/21/2026

05/21/2026

05/20/2026

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05/11/2026

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