Valley Forge was not a battle. It was a winter encampment, and it nearly ended the American Revolution. From December 1777 to June 1778, roughly 12,000 Continental soldiers camped on the hills above the Schuylkill River while the British occupied Philadelphia twenty miles east. They arrived cold, hungry, and demoralized after defeats at Brandywine and Germantown. Over the next six months, approximately 2,000 of them died — not from enemy fire, but from disease, exposure, and starvation.
PEOPLE
KEY EVENTS
STORIES
MODERN VOICE
What the Ground Remembers
People arrive expecting something dramatic — a battlefield, maybe, with monuments and cannon placements. What they find is quiet rolling hills, open fields, and a few rows of reconstructed log huts. T...
HISTORICAL VOICE
The Prussian Who Taught Americans to Fight
Friedrich von Steuben arrived at Valley Forge claiming to be a Prussian lieutenant general. He was actually a former captain who had been dismissed from the Prussian army years earlier. Benjamin Frank...