Valley Forge National Historical Park

Avg. User Rating:

Valley Forge, Pennsylvania(610) 783-1077

Category:
Sightseeing
Not right?
Update Address

Show More Info

Signs of Fall Photo - King of Prussia, Pennsylvania

User Reviews

Valley Forge National Park

by zabelle

Portland, Connecticut

October 21, 2007

Best of IgoUgo Your first stop as you enter the park is the visitor center. There you can walk through their museum and also sit through an 18 minute video that will familiarize you with what exactly happened here from November 1777 to June 1778. There is also a ...Read more Your first stop as you enter the park is the visitor center. There you can walk through their museum and also sit through an 18 minute video that will familiarize you with what exactly happened here from November 1777 to June 1778. There is also a very nice store and restrooms. For $12 you can purchase a CD or cassette tape tour of the park. We decided to just take a map and follow the trails. You can also use your cell phone to get a tour, at the different stops they provide you with the phone number as well as the number of the commentary. We did this at only one stop it is just too time consuming, I suppose you could put the cell phone on speaker but it was cold and windy so we just pretty much kept moving.

The trail begins in back of the visitor center. There are parking lots near all the sites on the map. The first site has some reconstructed cabins so that you can get an idea of what life was like here. There are 12 bunks per cabin and during that winter of 1777 there were 2,000 cabins. How comfortable you were depended a lot on how well you built your cabins and also how well equipped you were. Some of the men no longer had shoes and their socks were so wore they had no bottoms. Others had money to spend on supplies that were for sale in the market. We were pleased to hear that the troops from Connecticut were among those who were well supplied. Mad Anthony Wayne was in charge of getting supplies into camp and there is a large statue of him mounted on his horse at one of the stops. February was the worst month here and through death, desertion and the hospital the number of troops went from 12,000 to 6,000.

Washington’s headquarters is still there and you can walk into the house. There are docents dressed in period costumes on both floors of the house to answer any questions you might have. None of the furniture in the house is original but it is of the period. The house itself however is 85% authentic. Washington hated being here, it is a small house and he was a very private man, he had no privacy. Martha came and spent a good part of the winter here with him. There is a sword on the desk in what was his office, this is the one used by Barry Bostwick in the movie about George Washington, parts of it were filmed here and after the shooting was done they donated the sword to the park department.

There are lots of other things to see here. We spent three hours and we would have spent more if we didn’t have other things to see. There are many trails that can be followed if you want to get into the woods. Close

From journal October in Valley Forge, PA

Valley Forge National Historical Park

What's Nearby?

Nearby Things to Do

Popular Valley Forge Hotels

Popular Things to Do in Valley Forge

Avg. User Rating:

User Reviews

Valley Forge National Park