Lafayette's Tour

Lafayette's Tour spans 173 miles across North Carolina, retracing towns the Marquis de Lafayette visited during his celebrated 1825 American tour. The French general, a close ally of George Washington during the Revolutionary War, toured the young United States as a national guest nearly 50 years after the war's end, and the city of Fayetteville in the southeastern part of the state takes its name directly from him. As one of North Carolina's longest designated byways, the route passes through plantation country and small towns built around old Southern architecture, offering a slow, historically layered alternative to interstate travel across the state's Coastal Plain and Piedmont. There's no fee to drive any part of it, and the sheer length means the byway shifts character several times along the way, from antebellum river towns to rural farming communities. It rewards travelers willing to take it in stages rather than in one sitting, with Lafayette's own 1825 route as the connecting thread.

• 173 miles, one of NC's longest byways
• Marquis de Lafayette's 1825 tour
• Fayetteville namesake
• plantation-era architecture
• Coastal Plain and Piedmont
• Revolutionary War history