Yorktown

On Monday we “completed” the Williamsburg “triangle,” Williamsburg, Jamestown and Yorktown. The latter, of course, celebrates not colonial America so much as the emergence of the United States of America following six years of war, the War for Independence.

Again, two sites commemorate the place, three if you count the Town of York site. We visited two, the Yorktown Victory Center, run by the Commonwealth, and the Yorktown Battlefield, managed by the NPS. The former offers “living history,” the latter interprets the past.

Our first stop was the state living history site, which, as they readily admit, is a work in progress. But, as at Jamestown, their presentation seems to this historian to be accurate and engaging.

Seems like I've not done much to depict the natural landscape

Ma and Pa fight the revolution

The encampment is presented against the backdrop of a farm

Peas and Beans drying in the Kitchen

The Colonel's tent

A Captain's tent

The battlefield site is exactly that, a battlefield site. The ranger-led tour was interesting and the grounds gave a very clear sense of the battle and its privations.

An amusing "old school" ranger tour. At one point after telling an amusing tale about a pet British dog who loved to chase cannonballs, he paused and said "the Park Service would call this useless knowledge." But he was right, the anecdote did humanize the narrative.