Nine reconstructed log huts facing a gravel company street mark the camp of the Virginia brigade of Brigadier General Peter Muhlenberg on the outer line of the Valley Forge encampment of 1777 and 1778. Washington's General Orders of 18 December 1777 fixed the soldiers' huts at fourteen by sixteen feet, with sides, ends and roofs of logs, side walls six and a half feet high made tight with clay, a wooden fireplace at the rear lined with eighteen inches of clay, and a door of split oak slabs in the end facing the street. Each squad of twelve men built and shared one hut, and the army set its 1,500 to 2,000 huts in parallel lines. The site is the centre of the park's living history program, with rangers and volunteers in 18th-century dress.
To hurry the work, Washington promised twelve dollars to the party in each regiment that finished its hut quickest and in the most workmanlike manner, and a hundred dollars to anyone who found a cheaper, quicker covering than boards. Duportail's 1778 map of the camp shows the huts of Muhlenberg's and George Weedon's Virginia regiments in two parallel lines beside the outer line defences.
Archaeology shows the orders were not always followed. Excavation began in 1972, ahead of a parking lot, and identified 18 huts of the period, 14 of them fully excavated. The easternmost measured nine by ten feet plus a hearth, some fireplaces sat in a corner, and one hut had none. Finds included 30 musket balls, one bearing tooth marks, cattle, sheep and pig bones, and a redware pot holding sulfur. Weedon's brigade had held the sunken lane at Sandy Hollow at Brandywine that September.
Getting there
40.0972, -75.4259
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
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