Plan Ahead

This is one of the states newest parks and will require a little planning on your part. There is over 2,200 acres of historic battlefield land and there is no way to see it all in one day. The map below will give you an idea about how large an area this park covers and how spread out it is.

Tours

We made the decision to pay for one of the tours offered through the VSP website. We emailed our desire for a tour to info@culpeperbattlefieldtours.com. In the spirit of transparency, there are other groups that offer tours, but this is the one we chose and will be talking about.

I emailed them about two weeks before we took our trip and within the hour, I had a response. We were sent a link to their website and a list of their tours with pricing. We decided on the hiking tour, since that is what we do when we visit the VSP. Once we had decided on our tour, we paid via PayPal and were sent a receipt along with a picture of our guide and detailed instructions on how to meet up on the appropriate day.

Our Tour

We met our guide, William Treuting, at the Southern States, 13655 Beverly Ford Rd, Elkwood VA 22718. This allowed us to arrive early enough to eat lunch at the Subway shop in this Southern States.

You can get gas, coffee snacks, lunch and much more here, so plan to get here early enough to take advantage of the facilities. They have clean restrooms and you will want to take advantage of them since there are no facilities on the tour.

Buford's Knoll

We followed William to our first stop, Buford's Knoll Walking Trail. This trail is around 3 miles from start to finish. The walk is fairly level except for the walk up the knoll. Without the guide, it would have been just us looking at green fields of grass and trees, but William made it come alive telling us about the battle.

At one point on the tour we came to a home that was still there and it was interesting to hear about its history.

The last thing we were shown before heading back to the car, was a rock wall that was used during the war.

Here is a shot of Buford's Knoll and the trail leading to it.

Here is a map of our hike at Bufords Knoll

St. James Episcopal Church

We returned to our vehicle's and drove about 10 minutes to our next stop, St. James Episcopal Church. After a short walk into the woods, we came to where the church used to be and William gave us more information that the marker at the entrance.

Here is a map of our hike at the church grounds.

Fleetwood Hill

Our last stop on the tour was Fleetwood Hill. After a few brief words from our guide, he left us to walk and read the many markers here. Here is a picture of our guide and ourselves on the trail.