OT: What historical place(s) do you bike/live near?

[SouthernBelle]

I could ride to the Hermitage, Andrew Jackson's home. A couple of week's ago we rode by the Sam Davis home, confederate hero. There are various plantation type places plus several in Nashville.

Interestingly, on my Saturday ride in Kentucky, we had a rest stop at the Jefferson Davis Memorial which I did not know existed until then. It was huge.

Stones River Battlegrounds.

Drat, I'm blanking.

[Pax]

I laughed out loud when I read the thread title, I live in the middle of nowhere Illinois so as far as historical goes...not so much.

We do have the Morrow Plots if agriculture is your thing.

[snapdragen]

The Winchester Mystery House is down the block from my office.

http://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/

[eclectic]

Everyone has such interesting sites! I want to go visit them all

I have ridden by and canoed from Fort Mandan where Lewis and Clark spent their first winter, met Sacajawea and that is where she had her baby, Pomp. It is a full scale replica of the fort. And down river (Missouri/Knife) is a rebuilt Mandan village with fully equipped earth lodges.

If you go the other direction from here you end up at the geographical center of North America - Equal distance to all beaches

Ride north from there and we have the International Peace Garden - you can take your picture standing in the US and Canada at the same time.

For the non faint of heart we have the Maah-Daah-Hey mountain bike trail. Vitals: 110.00 miles (176.99 KM) miles Steep At Times
This trail takes you through Teddy Roosevelt's old stomping grounds in the ND badlands
I have NOT ridden that.

[ridethewind]

I laughed out loud when I read the thread title, I live in the middle of nowhere Illinois so as far as historical goes...not so much.

I'm in total agreement, Queen. Nowhere, indeed.

[MomOnBike]

My house is a couple blocks from William Jennings Bryan's house, Fairview. ...but that's only interesting to those interested in the edges of American History.

I used to live near the fort that Kit Carson commanded for a short time, Ft. Garland.

Um, other than that, nothing.

[Crankin]

Ditto everything SheFly said. My commute home also includes part of the 7 mile march that the Acton Minutemen made on their way to the Battle at the North Bridge in Concord. I ride by the bridge on almost every ride I do and it never stops amazing me that I live in such an awesome place. There is even a cafe open for lunch by this spot now and I think it would be a very nice place to end a ride before going home, which is only about 3.5 miles. On Tuesday we rode by all of the "authors" houses and I realized that I haven't visited them since I was a kid. So even though I complain about how crowded Concord Center gets with tourists, it's still really cool to live there!

[Hub]

If you're into the blues, Hwy 61 goes though Cleveland . . . and Hannibal Lecter's Mom lives here. What I should say is that Thomas Harris, the guy who wrote the Hannibal Lecter books lives here in Cleveland.

[ShubieGA]

Nothing as exciting as some of the previous posts, but the closest to work is the Martin Luther King Center historical district (BRAG's Bike Atlanta fest met there last year). It's a great place to visit. Also President Carter's library, Margaret Mitchell's house, Centennial Park from '96 Olympics. There are also civil war battlefields and cemeteries - they are pretty cool. New attractions include the World of Coke (interesting for the history of Coke and to taste all the flavors sold around the world) and the Georgia Aquarium.

[IFjane]

Oh wow - lots here.

Thomas Jefferson's home http://www.monticello.org/

James Madison's home http://www.montpelier.org/

Zachary Taylor's birthplace http://www.visitocva.com/history.htm

James Monroe's home http://www.ashlawnhighland.org/

We sit in the middle of lots of civil war battlegrounds, if you are into that kind of stuff, including the burial site of Stonewall Jackson's arm (really!) http://www.visitocva.com/ellwood.htm

Many of our rides start in the parking lot of the oldest continuously operating Lutheran church in the country http://www.germanna.org/church.html

and on and on and on......

[GLC1968]

There is tons of historical stuff around me but admittedly, except for early American history (I grew up in New England), I don't know as much about it as I should.

Let's see what I can recall:

The Woolworth's where the 4 black students took a stand by eating at the 'white' lunch counter as a major turning point in the civil rights movement? That's a couple of miles from my house in our downtown area.



There are tons of Civil War historical sites around here including battlegrounds (part of my commute is on Old Battleground road where I ride by a few old cannons). Tons of early southern plantations, as well...This is the heart of tobacco country. This is a pic of the Chinqua-Penn plantation that I took on one of our rides:




And on another of our rides, we passed this house...made entirely of rocks!


There is WAY more history, but this is the stuff extremely local to me that I see daily. I'm also sure I'm forgetting some majorly important places as well.