Make reservations now: Civil War tour on Saturday, July 23 filling up fast

The National Press Club's annual Civil War tour on Saturday, July 23, is filling up quickly. Club members wishing to make reservations should contact Richard Meyer of the Travel Committee at 703-356-6884.

This year’s tour will follow the escape route of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth. Club members and guests will trace Booth’s frantic horseback escape from D.C. the night of April 14, 1865, after shooting President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theater on 10th St. N.W.

The tour will visit the Surratt House in Clinton, Maryland, where Booth and accomplice David Herold picked up guns and supplies stored there. The tour will proceed to the house of Dr. Samuel Mudd, in Waldorf, Maryland, where Mudd treated Booth’s broken leg. Other sites to be visited are Rich Hill, near Bel Alton, Maryland, where Booth and Herold stopped at the home of Samuel Cox and took refuge in a nearby pine thicket, and the Potomac River location where the pair departed Maryland by boat and crossed into Virginia.

The NPC group will depart by bus promptly at 8 a.m. from the F Street side of the National Press Building, returning at approximately 4:30 p.m. There is no charge but club members are limited to one guest each. Lunch will be provided.

The trip is being hosted by the Civil War Trust pursuant to a reciprocal arrangement with the Club.