Cold Harbor Crossroads

Since the mid-eighteenth century, travelers passing through this crossroads found rest at a tavern that stood there, a place traditionally understood as offering lodging and a cold drink but not a hot meal. The tavern also served as a grocery store and polling place, and by the outbreak of the American Civil War the Burnett family operated a hotel in the building while farming approximately 150 acres south of it. The original tavern survived into the twentieth century before fire destroyed it. In June 1864, Timothy O'Sullivan photographed the tavern with soldiers milling around it, and artist Edwin Forbes sketched activity there; another photograph taken nearby showed Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock with the three division commanders of the Army of the Potomac's Second Corps: Gens. Francis Barlow, David Birney, and John Gibbon. In July 2021, the American Battlefield Trust and its partners acquired the site as part of its broader work preserving battlefield land from the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Civil War.

Virginia · United States