PRINCE EDWARD – When we last visited the Sailor's Creek Battlefield Historical State Park's spanking new visitor center in 2009, workers were still matching the key for Park Manager's Chris Calkins' office door.

Racks were empty, and there was plenty of space available for exhibits.

That was then, however. The now is quite a different sight.

The Department of Conservation and Recreation has set a grand opening for the center later this week-a visitor center that now has its bookstore, research library and interactive displays.

“…We've got all of the infrastructure done,” Calkins said Monday. “In other words, the museum's done, the…visitor center is done, the Hillsman House is done.”

Now, as a measure of how far they've come, they are working on landscape restoration-a process that will include planting trees and, at some point, thinning some out along Sailor's Creek, giving a better vista from the Hillsman House to the battlefield.

While the park and the visitor center have been open for months, the grand opening is a kick-off of sorts made possible with the 2002 passage of a bond measure.

There is, after all, a special history at this site where the counties of Nottoway, Amelia and Prince Edward converge. It was here, on April 6, 1865, where the last major battles of the Civil War were fought.

It is here that Commanding General Robert E. Lee lost 7,700 men and eight generals. Some 72-hours later, the war would end at the Appomattox surrender.

What helps make the Sailor's Creek site so special today is that in a time when growth has changed the landscape of many historical battlefields little has changed in the area winding just off of U.S. Route 307 on State Route 617. What once was a farming community is, for the most part, still that way.

It's about as preserved as a battlefield pushing 150 years can be.

The Hillsman House, standing much as it did in 1865, is its own sentinel with its bloodstained floors. The tiny white clapboard home was a hospital for Union and Confederate soldiers. Three hundred and fifty eight Union soldiers were treated there; 161 Confederates.

A chronological timeline that organizes the exhibit at the center begins with the fall of Richmond and goes through the battle of Cumberland Church-spanning the events of April 2-8. It takes in the two battles fought at High Bridge, Cumberland Church and the three battles at Saylor's Creek.

Helping to bring history to life.

The Park visitor center is open to visitors 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 12-5 p.m. on Sunday. The Hillsman House will open after the first weekend in April Thursday through Sunday.