- Civil War Series - The 1862 Peninsula Campaign, intended by the Union to put a decisive end to the Civil War by capturing the Confederate capital of Richmond, began with a slow start. Gen. George McClellan, despite setting out in March 1862 with the largest army the continent had ever seen, inched up the …
- Civil War Series - Malvern Hill is one of the country’s best-preserved Civil War battlefields and marked the culmination of the Seven Days’ Battles, a series of engagements outside Richmond, Virginia in June-July 1862 that ended Union Gen. George McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac, in the midst of a retreat to …
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- Civil War Series - Following General Robert E. Lee’s defeat the day prior at Beaver Dam Creek, the Confederate Army won a decisive but costly victory on June 27, 1862 in the Battle of Gaines’ Mill. Attempting to catch the Federal Army as it was retreating south to the James River, Lee sent the …
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- Civil War Series - The Battle of Beaver Dam Creek—also known as the Battle of Mechanicsville or Ellerson’s Mill—is widely remembered today for being General Robert E. Lee’s debut as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. With the Union Army on the doorstep of Richmond in June 1862, Lee embarked on a series …
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- Civil War Series - As Union gunboats approached Richmond, the Confederate capital, on the morning of May 15, 1862, they were greeted with a hail of heavy artillery fire from what would come to be known as Drewry’s Bluff, a Civil War fortification perched high above Virginia’s James River. Named for local property owner …
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Despite being in Shenandoah National Park’s busy North District, the Big Devils Stairs hike is relatively free of crowds, leaving visitors alone to explore one of the area’s most spectacular metabasalt gorges. Most hikers will turn around at the primary overlook at 2.3 miles, perched stop the east rim of the canyon with the cascading …
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- Revolutionary War Series - The roughly one-mile Nature Trail at Virginia’s George Washington Birthplace National Monument offers a short journey through peaceful woodlands situated across Dancing Marsh from the main historic area. The forest was the old stomping grounds of George Washington, who, despite moving area from the Pope’s Creek area when he was …
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- Revolutionary War Series - George Washington Birthplace National Monument in Tidewater Virginia is, at least to some degree, a fraud. Yes, to the best of our knowledge, the Revolutionary War hero and first U.S. president was born here, on what was once Pope’s Creek Plantation, in February 1732. The structures that exist today, however—from …
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- Civil War Series - At the start of the Civil War in 1861, both the Union and the Confederacy foresaw a quick conflict, expecting to be done fighting by summer’s end. Politicians in the North believed the Federal Army would conquer Richmond, the Confederate capital, in one fell swoop, while top Southern general P.G.T. …
2017 is nearly in the books, and it’s been a banner year for Live and Let Hike. Viewership reached new heights (roughly 85,000 visitors and 167,000 page views in 2017), and I added 76 new posts this year that covered hikes, scenic byways, and other destinations in 11 different states: California, Colorado, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, …
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