Booker T. Washington National Monument

Booker T. Washington was born into slavery in April 1856 on the 207-acre Burroughs tobacco farm in the Virginia Piedmont. After emancipation he educated himself and went on to become the founding principal of Tuskegee Institute and the most influential African American educator, author, and orator of his era. The monument preserves the farm's landscape, with reconstructed buildings on the sites where he spent his first nine years.

Tour the reconstructed kitchen cabin, smokehouse, and barns, meet the farm's heritage-breed horses, sheep, and pigs, watch the park film on Washington's life, and walk the Plantation Trail past the birthplace site; young kids love the farm animals. For a challenge, hike the Jack-O-Lantern Branch Trail loop through the woods and fields of the old farm.