Valley Forge

On the north-western outskirts of Philadelphia is Valley Forge, where the American army, poorly equipped and inadequately supplied, spent the months from December 1777 to June 1778, in the darkest days of the revolutionary war. Out of a force of between 12,000 and 20,000 men 2000 died of hunger or disease. There are "living history" presentations (daily in summer, at weekends in winter) of the soldiers' ordeal.

Valley Forge was originally an iron forge on Valley Creek in the 1740s. By the Revolutionary War, the town was an important supply center for the Colonists until the British destroyed it in 1777. For the winter of 1777-8 George Washington chose Valley Forge as his encampment base.