Ideas for a day out
Battlefields, headquarters and taverns of the "Crossroads of the American Revolution".
Photo: Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
They call New Jersey the Crossroads of the American Revolution. It lay between New York and Philadelphia, and the armies crossed and recrossed it for most of the war. These are the places where you can still stand in the story, roughly in the order it happened.
1State Park · Hopewell Township, Mercer County
Where Washington's army came ashore on the night of December 25, 1776, before marching on Trenton. The crossing is reenacted every Christmas Day.
Photo: Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
2State Historic Site · Trenton, Mercer County
A tall column marks the spot where American artillery opened fire on the Hessian garrison on the morning of December 26, 1776.
Photo: Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
3State Park · Princeton, Mercer County
The open fields where Washington's second victory in nine days was won on January 3, 1777, with the Clarke House that served as a field hospital.
Photo: Patrick Nouhailler's…, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
4State Historic Site · River Edge Borough, Bergen County
The army escaped across the Hackensack River here during the retreat of November 1776, and the Steuben House still stands by the bridge.
5State Historic Site · Somerville Borough, Somerset County
Washington's headquarters during the Middlebrook encampment of 1778–79.
Photo: Zeete, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
6State Park · Manalapan Township, Monmouth County
Scene of one of the largest battles of the war, fought in brutal heat in June 1778, and the source of the Molly Pitcher legend.
Photo: Jonathan Schilling, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
7State Historic Site · Franklin Township, Somerset County
Washington's last wartime headquarters, where in 1783 he wrote his farewell orders to the army.
Photo: Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
8State Historic Site · Haddonfield Borough, Camden County
New Jersey's legislature met in this tavern in 1777, and here confirmed New Jersey as an independent state.
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