I recently visited Valley Forge National Historical Park in Pennsylvania, where George Washington and his troops spent the bitter winter of 1777. From Artillery Park, I walked the Joseph Plumb Martin Trail to Washington’s headquarters and then hiked back along the Mount Joy Trail.
Valley Forge is a beautiful place of rolling landscapes, haunted by the hardship and suffering that marked the long, cold winter of 1777. It’s ennobled by the enduring legacies of courage, perseverance, and patriotism that are passed down to all of us as the inheritors of the American Revolution. Valley Forge is a place to which one can return time and again and learn something new.
On the edge of Valley Forge National Historical Park is the stone house headquarters where Washington spent those long months. It contains Washington’s study, the little room where his aides worked, and crowded sleeping quarters upstairs. Washington was far from his home at Mount Vernon, just as his troops living in rough shelters strewn around the wintery landscape were far from their homes. Despite inadequate food, clothing, and shelter, the soldiers of Valley Forge did what they could to take care of one another and prepare for the battles ahead.
