Built in 1860 beside Gordonsville’s important rail junction, the Exchange Hotel began as a railroad hotel for Virginia Central Railroad travelers before becoming part of the Gordonsville Receiving Hospital in March 1862. In less than a year, it admitted more than 23,000 sick and wounded soldiers brought by train from major battlefields, treating men from both sides in the war. By war’s end, more than 70,000 men had passed through the larger hospital system, and just over 700 were buried nearby. Afterward it served as a Freedman’s Bureau hospital, then returned to hotel use until the 1940s, before restoration and preservation as a museum.