WINCHESTER Though best known for its Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival, Winchester is a quirky little Shenandoah Valley city with a pedestrian mall, a little-known but rich Civil War history and claims to country singer Patsy Cline and novelist Willa Cather.

The oddest attraction the city has to offer is probably the Jefferson Davis curse, which is worth a look even if you're only casually interested in the Civil War. The curse, written by an angry if poetic Union soldier, is scrawled on the wall of the second floor of the downtown courthouse built in 1840.

"To Jeff Davis

may he be set afloat on a boat without compass or rudder

then that any contents be swallowed by a shark the shark

by a whale the whale in the devils belly and the devil in hell

the gates locked the key lost and further may he be put in

the north west corner with a south east wind blowing

ashes in his eyes for all eternity"

Winchester is full of strange little tidbits of history like that - some trivial, like the curse, and some traditional. Like George Washington's presence here as a young man surveying the area.

The old courthouse not only has the curse - framed and lit - but also a Civil War Museum with thousands of artifacts, many plucked years ago from the fields of battle around Winchester. The relics include such oddities as metal armor worn over a soldier's chest, home-made dog tags by soldiers who feared an unmarked grave, and an exploded gun barrel which may have killed the unlucky man who fired it. The sheer number reflect the intense Civil War action that swept through the area.

"In the summer we have a constant stream of people through here," said Maricarol Miller, manager of the museum.

There are also plenty of battlefields to see, including the first and second battles of Kernstown - where Stonewall Jackson suffered his first defeat. There's even a new visitors center on the more than 300 acres of preserved land.

"If you want to explore the part of the Civil War that's been ignored, the Shenandoah Valley is the place to be," said Ben Ritter, an amateur Civil War historian who helped bring the Kernstown battlefield to the public's attention. "This was the sideshow to the big show."

There were six Civil War battles in the area and the city of Winchester changed hands more than 70 times during the war - supposedly 13 times in one day.

Thousands of Union and Confederate soldiers, many in unmarked graves, are buried in one of the city's cemeteries.

Southern Civil War heroes walked here, too. Stonewall Jackson kept his headquarters near downtown Winchester at a house on North Braddock Street. The Stonewall Jackson's Headquarters Museum includes his prayer book and camp table. There's also another quirky fact about the house. The 1854 structure, built in the Hudson River Gothic Revival style, belonged to Lt. Col. Lewis T. Moore, the great-great-grandfather of television actress Mary Tyler Moore. When the time came to duplicate the original wallpaper in the room Jackson used as his office, Mary Tyler Moore paid the bill, said Ritter.

But Winchester is more than the Civil War.

Though Willa Cather, the novelist who won the Pulitzer Prize for what critics called plainspoken writing about ordinary people, has a low profile in Winchester, where she was born, country singer Patsy Cline does not. Winchester has embraced Cline, one of country music's greatest singers, even naming three local roads after her.

"She had a wonderful voice,'' said Harold F. Madagan Jr., who owns the drugstore where Cline once worked. "There was a message in her songs that meant a lot to people."

Winchester is most famous for its Apple Blossom Festival - an annual paean to spring. The festival will run this year from Friday through May 4. There's a Queen Shenandoah, of course, and usually some famous celebrity who serves as grand marshal of the two parades. In the past those famous people have included Wayne Newton, Mary Tyler Moore, Robert Wagner, Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd - who served twice.

This year's queen will be Jaqui Rice, the daughter of former NFL wide receiver Jerry Rice. Though excited about being chosen, Jaqui Rice told one local paper she had never heard of the Apple Blossom Festival.

John Rosenberger, the executive director of the festival, said as many as 300,000 people could turn out. Those people spend somewhere between $10 million and $20 million during the 10 days of the festival.

Rosenberger said it isn't easy for such a small city - with a population of about 25,000 - to put on such a big event. "The scope of this is so astounding,'' he said. Up to 2,000 volunteers help put the festival's 40 to 50 events together.

"The economic benefit is huge," said Rosenberger. "But I look at the more subtle value to the community. Having done this for so many years and it's so huge, every time Winchester does anything now, they do it bigger than typical because we know we can. We do the Apple Blossom Festival every year."
Contact Carlos Santos at (434) 295-9542 or csantos@timesdispatch.com.