Media inquiries: Please contact Dave Neudeck, dave.neudeck@dcr.virginia.gov, 804-786-5053.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: May 05, 2017
Contact:
Wilderness Road State Park hosts Raid at Martin's Station, May 12-14
Ewing, Va. – More than 450 re-enactors, merchants, artists and artisans bring history to life during the “Raid at Martin's Station,” May 12-14 at Wilderness Road State Park.
Activities are scheduled 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sunday. Admission is $10 per vehicle Friday and Saturday and $4 per vehicle on Sunday. Friday will offer more than 10 frontier demonstration stations at the fort for students from the tri-state area. Admission for the Friday school day is $1 per student.
Visitors will be able to walk through and shop at an 18th-century market fair, visit a Cherokee Indian camp, listen to Colonial music and tour Historic Martin's Station. The event features Saturday afternoon and evening frontier battles between the militia at Martin's Station and Native American re-enactors. Battles start at 1 and 8:30 p.m.
Throughout the three-day event, world-renowned frontier artists, such as Andrew Knez Jr., Dennis Muzzy and Steve White, will sell original works in the visitor center. There will also be free seminars on 18thcentury topics conducted by Wallace Gusler, Paul Jones, Mark Baker and Eve Otmar. The Powder Horn Gift Shop will also be open, and the 20-minute film, “Wilderness Road, Spirit of a Nation,” will be playing in the visitor center theatre.
On May 13 at 10 a.m., the Virginia Society of the Sons of the American Revolution will conduct a flag-raising ceremony followed by a wreath-laying at the Wilderness Road Monument.
Historic Martin’s Station is the re-creation of Capt. Joseph Martin’s Fort originally built in 1775. The fort was near present-day Rose Hill, Virginia, and played a key role in the settlement of the American frontier and westward expansion during the Revolutionary War.
William Martin’s words describe the situation at Martin’s Station in 1776.
“This place is fifty miles in advance of the frontier, and on the road to Kentucky. In 1776 the great Cherokee war broke out, the Cherokees were then a great and powerful people, and their strength unbroken, living not far from Powell’s Valley, they commenced a sudden, devastating war, on the whole frontier border…” (From a letter written by William Martin, son of Capt. Joseph, to Layman C. Draper. Layman C. Draper Manuscript Collection, State Historical Society of Wisconsin.)
The weekend is sponsored by the Friends of Wilderness Road State Park. Wilderness Road State Park is managed by the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation.
Wilderness Road State Park is in Ewing, Virginia, within two hours of Knoxville,Tennessee, Bristol, Virginia, and Lexington, Kentucky. For more information, contact Wilderness Road at 276-445-3065 or email WildernessRoad@dcr.virginia.gov. Visit the Friends of Wilderness Road website at www.historicmartinsstation.com.
For more information about Virginia’s 37 award-winning state parks, call 800-933-PARK (7275) or visit www.virginiastateparks.gov.
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