Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site
Walker’s Jackson Ward home connects the Independent Order of St. Luke, banking, publishing, civil rights, disability, family, and neighborhood leadership.
Places and wildlife — page 64
Browse Explore’s field guide to destinations, wildlife, art, and the natural world. Open a discovery for practical details and background.
Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest
Jefferson’s private retreat, ornamental grounds, slave quarter sites, archaeology, and ongoing restoration expose architecture as experiment and plantation system.
Booker T. Washington National Monument
A reconstructed farm, archaeology, animals, trails, and exhibits interpret Washington’s first nine years in slavery and the landscape he later remembered.
Fort Monroe National Monument
The moated fortress, Casemate Museum, Point Comfort shoreline, Freedom’s Fortress story, and living community connect Indigenous ground, slavery, war, refuge, and defense.
Shenandoah National Park
Skyline Drive, waterfalls, quartzite peaks, oak forests, wildlife, and more than 500 trail miles protect a long mountain corridor above the Virginia Piedmont.
Great Falls Park
Rocky overlooks, canal ruins, rapids, flood marks, and riverside trails reveal the Potomac dropping violently through a narrow gorge near Washington.
Grayson Highlands State Park
Open balds below Mount Rogers, wind-shaped spruce, rock outcrops, Appalachian Trail access, and managed pony herds create Virginia’s most alpine-feeling landscape.
Natural Bridge State Park
A 215-foot natural arch, creek gorge, karst features, forest, and Monacan interpretation turn a famous roadside icon into a geological and cultural landscape.
First Landing State Park
Dunes, live oaks, Spanish moss, tidal shore, freshwater swamps, and 20 trail miles preserve a surprising coastal mosaic inside Virginia Beach.
False Cape State Park
Six undeveloped Atlantic miles, dunes, marsh, maritime forest, and the remains of Wash Woods are reached only by foot, bicycle, boat, or seasonal transport.
Natural Tunnel State Park
Stock Creek carved an 850-foot limestone tunnel later threaded by an active railroad, creating a dramatic meeting of geology, engineering, and Appalachian transport.
Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge
Beach, dunes, salt marsh, maritime forest, freshwater pools, lighthouse, and managed pony herds make Assateague a major Atlantic Flyway refuge.
Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge
Forested wetlands, canals, blackwater, Lake Drummond, wildlife, and maroon-community archaeology protect an ecosystem inseparable from histories of enslavement and resistance.
Douthat State Park
A 50-acre lake, stone and log Civilian Conservation Corps buildings, waterfalls, ridges, and more than 40 trail miles form one of Virginia’s classic park landscapes.
Virginia Creeper Trail
A 34-mile former rail corridor links Abingdon, Damascus, and Whitetop through farms, forest, streams, and more than forty restored trestles.
New River Trail State Park
A 57-mile linear park follows former Norfolk & Western track beside the New River and Chestnut Creek through tunnels, bridges, towns, and forest.
McAfee Knob
A broad stone shelf on Catawba Mountain opens one of the Appalachian Trail’s best-known views after a sustained climb from a tightly managed trailhead.
Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden
The domed conservatory, themed gardens, water, woodland, children’s areas, and seasonal displays make plant form, climate, design, and ecology immediately readable.
Norfolk Botanical Garden
More than sixty themed gardens, mature azaleas, roses, native plants, wetlands, tram routes, and canals fill a large coastal property beside Norfolk International Airport.
Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center
Sharks, rays, sea turtles, seals, Chesapeake habitats, conservation labs, and outdoor marsh trails connect aquarium spectacle to the working Atlantic coast.
Virginia Zoo
Asian, African, Australian, and North American animals share a compact landscaped zoo focused on species care, breeding, education, and conservation.
Virginia Living Museum
Aquarium tanks, native animals, wetland boardwalks, botanical collections, fossils, and a planetarium interpret Virginia from mountains to Chesapeake Bay.
Shenandoah Salamander
This small lungless salamander survives only on a few cool, rocky peaks inside Shenandoah National Park, where talus, moisture, and forest shade create narrow refuges.
Peaks of Otter Salamander
Confined to a small section of Virginia’s Blue Ridge, this slender woodland salamander lives under rocks and logs in cool, moist forest near the Peaks of Otter.
Roanoke Logperch
This federally endangered fish of the Roanoke and Chowan systems uses its pointed snout to turn small stones and seize insect larvae exposed beneath them.
James Spinymussel
This small endangered freshwater mussel survives in scattered clean streams of the upper James basin, partly buried in sand, gravel, and cobble where steady current delivers food.
Virginia Round-leaf Birch
Once believed extinct, this rare small tree persists naturally in a limited Smyth County watershed, recognized by rounded leaves and its close relationship to sweet birch.
Baltimore Museum of Art
The Cone Collection places Matisse at the heart of a free art museum with global collections and sculpture gardens in Charles Village.
The Walters Art Museum
Manuscripts, ancient objects, jeweled craftsmanship, and European paintings fill a free museum beside Mount Vernon’s Washington Monument.
American Visionary Art Museum
Mosaic-covered buildings and exuberant sculpture frame a museum devoted to self-taught artists at the foot of Federal Hill.
National Museum of Railroad History & Innovation (B&O)
Historic locomotives and rail cars occupy the Mount Clare roundhouse, where Baltimore’s railroad story connects machinery with national change.
Reginald F. Lewis Museum
Art, family histories, work, and resistance trace African American life across four centuries of Maryland at this Inner Harbor museum.
Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum
Boatbuilding, oyster harvesting, decoys, and a relocated screwpile lighthouse make the Bay’s working culture tangible along the Miles River.
Calvert Marine Museum
Southern Maryland’s ancient seas and living waterways meet in fossil displays, estuarine exhibits, historic boats, and Drum Point Lighthouse.
Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine
A star-shaped fort and open harbor views place the Battle of Baltimore and the origins of “The Star-Spangled Banner” on their actual ground.
Antietam National Battlefield
Farm lanes, ridges, fields, and Antietam Creek preserve the landscape of the September 1862 battle near Sharpsburg.
Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center
Immersive exhibits connect Harriet Tubman’s family, faith, skills, and liberation work with Dorchester County’s fields, woods, and waterways.
Maryland State House
The wooden dome crowns a working state capitol where Washington resigned his commission and Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris.
Historic St. Mary’s City
Archaeology and living-history interpretation recover a colonial capital on land already inhabited by the Yaocomaco people.
Historic London Town & Gardens
The William Brown House, reconstructed buildings, archaeology, and wooded gardens overlook the South River at a former colonial port.
Assateague Island National Seashore — Maryland
Ocean beach, dunes, bayside marsh, and free-roaming horses reveal the shifting edges of Maryland’s Atlantic barrier island.
Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge
Open marsh, shallow water, and forest support eagles and migrating waterfowl in a refuge reached by a short wildlife drive and walking trails.
Swallow Falls State Park
Muddy Creek Falls and the Youghiogheny’s rocky gorge share a short but uneven forest loop in Maryland’s western mountains.
Rocks State Park
The King and Queen Seat rises above a wooded Deer Creek valley; the separate Falling Branch area holds Kilgore Falls.
Calvert Cliffs State Park
A woodland-and-wetland walk reaches a small Chesapeake beach where eroding Miocene deposits reveal the region’s marine past.
Catoctin Mountain Park
Mountain trails and quartzite outcrops overlook a Maryland landscape shaped by forest recovery, recreation, and earlier rural industry.
C&O Canal at Great Falls
Great Falls Tavern anchors canal history, a level towpath, the Olmsted Island overlook, and access to the strenuous Billy Goat Trail.
Torrey C. Brown Rail Trail
A former Northern Central Railway corridor carries walkers, cyclists, and riders between northern Baltimore County communities and Pennsylvania.