Winchester Travel Guide
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76 miles W of Washington, D.C.; 189 miles NW of Richmond
Winchester is Virginia's present-day "Apple Capital," so-called because of the number of apple orchards in the northern end of the Shenandoah Valley. It was the site of a Shawnee Indian campground before Pennsylvania Quakers settled it in 1732. Later, George Washington set up shop here during the French and Indian Wars. Thanks to its strategic location, Winchester changed hands no fewer than 72 times during the Civil War. Both Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson and Union Gen. Philip Sheridan made their headquarters here at one time or another.
Winchester is also the birthplace of novelist Willa Cather and hometown of country music great Patsy Cline. It's also famous for the Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival in May, one of the region's most popular events.
You can spend a morning or afternoon here and see Washington's office and Stonewall Jackson's headquarters, Winchester's major attractions. And country music fans can visit Patsy Cline's gravesite on the edge of town.
"Crazy" for Patsy Cline--Only die-hard country music fans know Winchester native named Virginia Hensley by her real name, for it was as Patsy Cline that Virginia Hensley sang "Walkin' After Midnight" on the nationally televised "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts" in the 1950s. The record of that song sold a million copies.
Other tunes like "Crazy," "Leavin' on Your Mind," and "Imagine That" will forever be linked to Patsy Cline.
Her life came to an abrupt end in March 1963, when she, Hawkshaw Hawkins, and the Cowboy Copas died in a plane crash. Her body was brought home and buried in Shenandoah Memorial Park, 3 miles south of town on U.S. 522.
The Winchester/Frederick County Visitors Center has a Patsy Cline Corner that includes her very own jukebox. Pick up a brochure that points the way to important sites in her life, including her home, Gaunt's Drug Store (where she worked), the high school she attended, GNM Music (where she cut her first record), the house where she married second husband Charlie Dick, and her grave.
