Qualla: Guilford Courthouse National Military Park

Guilford Courthouse National Military Park: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Cornwallis won the battle. Then he lost the war. On March 15, 1781, the British general held the field at the end of a brutal afternoon in the Carolina backcountry, and by any conventional measure of the day, that meant victory. But more than a quarter of his army lay dead or wounded across the rolling Guilford hills, and the redcoats who could still march were too few to chase Nathanael Greene's escaping Continentals through the pine woods. Seven months later, Cornwallis would surrender at Yorktown. The road to that surrender begins at 2332 New Garden Road, just north of downtown Greensboro, where 250 acres of preserved battlefield now form Guilford Courthouse National Military Park.

Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Guilford Courthouse National Military Park: A Pyrrhic Afternoon

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Greene chose the ground carefully. He arranged his army in three lines stretched across the wooded ridges, knowing the British would have to fight through each in turn. The first line, militia from North Carolina, fired one volley and melted into the trees. The second, Virginia m...

Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Guilford Courthouse National Military Park: The Quaker Who Made It Happen

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MarmadukePercy, CC BY-SA 3.0. David Schenck saw the field in 1886 and refused to let it disappear. The Greensboro lawyer chartered the Guilford Battle Ground Company the next year, bought up acreage piece by piece, and eventually handed 125 acres to the federal government for free. Congress accepted the gift ...

Image: MarmadukePercy | CC BY-SA 3.0

Guilford Courthouse National Military Park: Stone Men in the Woods

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Upstateherd, CC BY-SA 4.0. Walk the battlefield today and you meet a parade of granite and bronze. There is Nathanael Greene on horseback, the Rhode Island Quaker who lost almost every battle he fought in the South yet bled the British dry doing it. There is William Hooper, the North Carolina signer of the...

Image: Upstateherd | CC BY-SA 4.0

Guilford Courthouse National Military Park: Why It Mattered

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tamar Hayardeni, CC BY-SA 4.0. Cornwallis spent the weeks after Guilford Courthouse limping toward the coast to refit. Greene swung south to retake the Carolinas piece by piece. Unable to hold the interior, Cornwallis marched his depleted army into Virginia, hoping for a decisive blow. He cornered himself inst...

Image: Tamar Hayardeni | CC BY-SA 4.0

Guilford Courthouse National Military Park: Visiting the Ground

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Upstateherd, CC BY-SA 4.0. The park sits inside the modern street grid of Greensboro - apartment complexes press against the boundary, and traffic on Battleground Avenue hums close by. Inside the gates, the noise drops away. A visitor center anchors the route, and a paved loop drive connects the major monu...

Image: Upstateherd | CC BY-SA 4.0