Walking the Battle Road

I walk people along Massachusetts Avenue and ask them to imagine it unpaved, lined with stone walls and apple orchards, with exhausted British soldiers trying to fight their way through while fresh militia poured fire from every conceivable hiding place. The terrain has changed—strip malls where farms stood—but some original features remain. The Whittemore marker. The Russell House. The footprint of the road itself. You have to work to see the battlefield, but it's still here underneath modern Arlington.