The North Star
Tour

The site of Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose — the first legally sanctioned free African settlement in what became the United States. Founded 1738 under the Spanish governor of Florida, it served as sanctuary for those escaping British colonial slavery. A reconstructed fort, boardwalk, and museum interpret the Afro-Spanish-Indigenous community that defended St. Augustine.

Charleston's harbor was a road, a weapon, a hiding place. Robert Smalls and other freedom seekers used its waters during the Civil War to reach Union gunboats. Fort Sumter was added to the Underground Railroad Network to Freedom, cementing the harbor's significance as an escape route where the sea itself was the path.

Opened 2023 on Gadsden's Wharf — the very soil where thousands of enslaved Africans first touched North American ground. Connects to the William and Ellen Craft escape story: the Crafts disguised themselves and fled from Georgia through Charleston toward Philadelphia. The museum anchors the Deep South leg of the freedom journey.

One of the most dramatic secret-passage landscapes on the entire route. Freedom seekers — and entire maroon communities — found refuge in its insects, snakes, mud, and dense forest. Recognized by the National Park Service as the only Underground Railroad site spanning two states (NC and VA). The canal and 20 miles of trails tell the story of survival through nature.

Nicknamed "Freedom's Fortress" — a Union-held fortification where hundreds of freedom seekers sought refuge during the Civil War. General Benjamin Butler's 1861 "contraband" decision here changed the legal map of slavery overnight. The Casemate Museum and NPS walking tours interpret its layered history from colonial times through Reconstruction.

The NMAAHC anchors the Washington, D.C. leg. Its Underground Railroad and slavery galleries provide the broadest interpretive context for the entire journey. Thomas Smallwood's nearby Navy Yard neighborhood — where the term "Underground Railroad" was first publicly used — is a short walk away.

Frederick Douglass lived here at Cedar Hill from 1877 until his death in 1895. The D.C. freedom network he helped build — newspapers, speeches, political strategy — was as much a "secret passageway" as any swamp or cellar. Ranger-led tours of the 21-room Victorian house deepen understanding of how public Black leadership sustained the movement.

The gateway to the 125-mile Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Scenic Byway, located just miles from where Tubman was born. Ten-thousand square feet of exhibits, a research library, ranger programming, and connections to Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. Essential orientation point for the entire Eastern Shore leg of the tour.

The preserved 1800s store near Tubman's birthplace, where a pivotal early incident in her life occurred — a white overseer threw a two-pound lead weight that struck Tubman instead of a fleeing enslaved man, causing the traumatic brain injury she lived with the rest of her life. Docent-guided, by donation.

Delaware's colonial courthouse where the legal mechanisms of slavery — fugitive slave hearings, sales, punishments — played out. Understanding the law is essential to understanding why freedom seekers feared every town, why proximity to Pennsylvania was not yet safety, and why Delaware was simultaneously corridor and trap.

A waterfront park at the Christina River crossing named for two of Delaware's most essential Underground Railroad operatives. Thomas Garrett assisted an estimated 2,300 freedom seekers over four decades; Tubman and her charges were once trapped on the south bank here by slave catchers. The bronze sculpture "Unwavering Courage in the Pursuit of Freedom" marks the northern terminus of the Harriet Tubman Byway.

Founded 1794 by Richard Allen, Mother Bethel rests on the oldest parcel of land continuously owned by African Americans in the United States. A critical hub of the Underground Railroad — freedom seekers were sheltered, fed, and re-routed here. The basement museum houses Allen's tomb, original pews, and relics of the freedom movement. One block from where William Still documented hundreds of freedom seekers' stories.

One of Philadelphia's few remaining intact Underground Railroad stations open to the public. Built 1768 by Quaker abolitionists, the Johnson family used it for decades as a hiding place — freedom seekers were concealed in the third-floor attic. The only known surviving Underground Railroad station in Philadelphia with original hidden spaces. A National Historic Landmark.

William Still, born free in New Jersey to escaped parents, lived and worked in Philadelphia documenting the stories of hundreds of freedom seekers he helped — their names, origins, routes, and fates. His 1872 book remains the most detailed first-person record of the Underground Railroad. The Pennsylvania Abolition Society offices where he operated are in central Philadelphia.

Founded in 1775, the Pennsylvania Abolition Society became the oldest abolition society in the United States. Its Philadelphia network worked with William Still and other Underground Railroad organizers, combining legal strategy, record keeping, relief work, and public pressure inside a city where freedom could still be contested block by block.

Tubman worked summers in Cape May hotels as a cook, earning the money that funded her rescue missions. Located at the historic Macedonia Baptist Church Parsonage — a block that was the center of abolitionist activity, including a Baptist church that sheltered freedom seekers. Designated New Jersey's official Harriet Tubman Museum in 2020, it also covers Cape May's thriving free Black business community of the era.

The oldest standing residence in Lawnside, NJ — a community that was the only incorporated African American municipality in the northern United States. Built c. 1845 by Peter Mott, a free Black preacher, carpenter, and Underground Railroad stationmaster who sheltered freedom seekers. Owned by the Lawnside Historical Society and open Saturdays.

The oldest and largest known excavated burial site in North America for free and enslaved Africans, holding the remains of more than 419 individuals — with historians estimating 10,000–20,000 total burials. Located in the Ted Weiss Federal Building in Lower Manhattan, the monument is a profound anchor for understanding how deeply African labor and life shaped New York from its very founding.

Known locally as the "Grand Central Depot" of the Underground Railroad, Plymouth Church's tunnel-like basement concealed freedom seekers. Founded 1847 under the abolitionist minister Henry Ward Beecher (brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe), it became the nation's foremost antislavery pulpit. Abraham Lincoln worshipped here. One of the few active congregations in New York City still in its original Underground Railroad location. National Historic Landmark.

Founded c. 1838 by James Weeks, Weeksville was one of the largest free Black communities in pre-Civil War America — a place where free and formerly enslaved people built homes, businesses, schools, and a newspaper. The four surviving Hunterfly Road Houses have been restored to three time periods (1870s, 1900s, 1930s) and remain on their original site. First Black cultural center named to NYC's Cultural Institutions Group.

The Black Heritage Trail begins at the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial on Beacon Street and winds through 14 sites on Beacon Hill's north slope — the heart of Boston's 19th-century free Black community. The African Meeting House (1806), oldest Black church building standing in the U.S., is the trail's anchor. The Museum of African American History at 46 Joy Street is the final stop. NPS ranger-led tours available.

The Robert Gould Shaw and Massachusetts 54th Regiment Memorial marks the usual start of Boston's Black Heritage Trail. The relief honors the Black soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, making the trail's opening stop a direct encounter with Black military service, public memory, and the unfinished work of commemorating freedom struggles in civic space.

New Bedford was a terminus for the maritime route of the Underground Railroad — freedom seekers escaped aboard whaling ships, fishing vessels, and coastal packets. The museum's permanent "Sailing to Freedom" exhibition documents how people escaped slavery by sea before and during the Civil War. Frederick Douglass himself escaped to New Bedford disguised as a sailor.

Auburn, New York was where Tubman built her life in freedom. The park encompasses three properties: her Residence (182 South St), her Home for the Aged (180 South St), and Thompson AME Zion Church (47–49 Parker St) — the congregation she attended for 22 years and from which she was buried in 1913. NPS and Harriet Tubman Home, Inc. jointly operate the site. Her grave is at Fort Hill Cemetery, a short drive away.

Thompson AME Zion Church was Tubman's Auburn congregation for 22 years. She pledged money toward its construction, worshipped with the community, and her 1913 funeral departed from here. Restored by the National Park Service to its 1913 appearance, the church completes the Auburn story as a place of faith, organizing, mourning, and public legacy.

The NPS Network to Freedom's first international listing. Harriet Tubman lived in St. Catharines from 1851 to 1858 and worshipped here with more than 200 fellow freedom seekers who made Canada their home. Built 1855 to replace a smaller log church by African-American freedom seekers, Salem Chapel became the spiritual center of the community that had finally outrun American law. A Canadian National Historic Site. Tours reopen May 19, 2026.