Edina Heritage Tour

The Edina Heritage Tour begins at Upper Buchanan, a historic Americo-Liberian settlement whose homes and churches were built by freed Black Americans who migrated from the United States to Africa in the early 1800s in search of a new home. From the bank of the Benson River, a boat ride of approximately ten to fifteen minutes carries visitors across what is described as probably Africa’s only tri-confluence, where the Benson, St. John and Mechlin rivers merge along mangroves facing the Atlantic. The view from the water — rivers meeting among mangrove shores, the Atlantic visible beyond — is a defining image of the experience and one of the region’s most distinctive natural landscapes.

The boat lands in Edina, the settlement that gives the tour its name. Edina was established by freed Black Americans who built homes, raised families and created a community in this corner of Grand Bassa County. Among the notable figures associated with the settlement is Joseph J. Cheeseman, the 12th President of Liberia, who served from 1892 to 1896 and whose home is part of the heritage landscape the tour engages with. The settlement carries the imprint of its founders across its built environment, giving the place a strong sense of historical continuity.

The walking tour through Edina moves through nineteenth-century architecture that is still standing: homes built in the style of the period, churches whose walls have witnessed more than a hundred years of worship, monuments and other artifacts that anchor the community’s founding story. The experience is deliberately immersive — moving on foot through the streets and structures of a place built by people who chose to make Africa their home after the upheaval of the slave trade. The heritage of those early settlers is visible in the buildings around you, in their arrangement and in the artefacts that have been preserved.

Grand Bassa County itself is one of Liberia’s original three counties, situated on the Atlantic coast south of Monrovia and long known for its beaches, fishing and its deep-rooted connection to the country’s colonial and post-colonial history. The Edina Heritage Tour is one of the county’s most distinctive cultural experiences, combining a dramatic river journey with an encounter with the built heritage of Americo-Liberian settlement that is otherwise difficult for visitors to access. For anyone interested in the history of freed Black American colonisation, or in Liberia’s distinctive cultural landscape, the tour offers a rare combination of natural scenery and living heritage in a single itinerary.

The tri-confluence of the Benson, St. John and Mechlin rivers near Upper Buchanan is described as a unique geographical feature of Africa, and the boat ride across it is an integral part of the Edina experience, offering views of the river meeting the Atlantic among mangrove shores.

Edina preserves an intact ensemble of nineteenth-century Americo-Liberian architecture — homes, churches and monuments — in a living community, making it one of the most coherent historic townscapes of its kind in Liberia.

The tour connects visitors directly to the story of freed Black American colonisation in Africa, physically tracing the journey from Upper Buchanan to the homes and churches of Edina that their labour built and that their descendants still inhabit.