Welcome back to National Parks and other public lands with T!
Valley Forge National Historical Park preserves the site of George Washington’s Continental Army’s winter encampment. From December 1777 to June 1778, the army camped, trained and suffered through a hard winter. The troops were decimated by disease, starvation and desertion due to the harsh living conditions.
The site was chosen because it was between the Second Continental Congress in York and the British army in Philadelphia (which had fallen in the Battle of Brandywine.) In spite of the hardships, the Continental Army emerged from the encampment with better training and determination to prevail. Washington and the army marched on Monmouth in June 1778 and secured a much-needed victory for the revolution.
Our first stop was to the visitor center, which is in a temporary structure while the main visitor center undergoes renovation. We watched the short film on the history of Valley Forge and then got directions from a ranger to take the 10-mile Encampment Tour.
This is a self-guided driving tour with nine stops, most of which I will cover in future posts:
- Visitor Center
- Muhlenberg Brigade
- National Memorial Arch
- Wayne Statue
- Washington’s Headquarters & Valley Forge Station (Coming Soon)
- Redoubt 3
- Artillery Park
- Steuben Statue and Varnum’s HQ
- Washington Memorial Chapel (Coming Soon)
Location: 1400 North Outer Line Drive, King of Prussia, PA 19406
Designation: National Historical Park
Date designated or established: July 4, 1976
Date of my visit: 10/4/2019
You were in my neck of the woods!
😊😊
I was there in 1982 when I was a youngster on a family tour around the country in a motorhome. Of course, it was not until years later when I better understood the history of this place that I realized how precarious were those early years of the Revolution.
Yes, I too appreciate visiting these places more as an adult, but those family trips lit the spark😊
True enough!
You get a nice feel for the austerity that Washington’s troops experienced there.
😊