This is the middle of the river, in the middle of the park, in between the upper and lower sections of river, between Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Fortunately, it was calm enough that I got a mostly undistorted panorama, but there are a few fun class I rapids on the 10 mile section I paddled from Bushkill Access to Springfield Beach ($10 parking). The river is gorgeous, and I saw at least a half dozen bald eagles. It was surprisingly easy to catch the free hourly summer weekend ‘river runner’ shuttle to bring my kayak upstream. The driver let me bring mine inside folded, but other paddlers I saw put theirs on the canoe/kayak trailer.
The bus is also called the ‘Pocono Pony’, and it’s a lot of fun to chat with other riders. I was bragging about how many parks I had visited, when the guy next to me said he had been to all of them. He’s a riot, and he was on TV for #413. We chatted on the bus & river and compared notes. Well, mostly he chatted. In his old job, I think the conversations were mostly one-sided, since he’s a dentist. I enjoy meeting interesting folks, especially when they’ve got a great sense of humor and can teach me more about our parks.
Christmas night 1776 was a bad one. The Revolution was going poorly for the Americans. The British Navy had taken New York City and controlled the whole area. Some American militiamen were heading home, and the British had reason to believe they would win the war soon. Their regular army left Hessian mercenaries in charge of camps along the Delaware, but as the river was filled with dangerous ice flows, patrols were limited. Not that the German soldiers were drunk, mind you. They were professionals, and they were keeping careful watch, despite the storm.
George Washington wasn’t going to let the weather or river stop him. He wrote ‘Victory or Death’, and loaded his 2,400 troops and 18 cannon into sturdy river cargo boats which made repeated trips across the Delaware River (see photo) from Pennsylvania on the right to New Jersey on the left. Two other crossings had been aborted, and the storm was getting worse. It took longer than expected, but by around 4 am, his troops (and horses) climbed the hill and began marching south towards Trenton. The Hessians fought back, and the British reinforced. But Washington won three battles, two in Trenton and one in Princeton, before making camp in the mountains. The war would not be over as soon as everyone thought.
The New Jersey side of the crossing has a large wooded park on a hill, with trails and a small museum with some interesting artifacts. The Pennsylvania side has a museum, replica boats and some historic buildings along the river. I took the photo above from the narrow bridge as I walked between them. The lower section of the Delaware is either a full park unit or an affiliated multi-partner site, depending on who you ask or which website you check. There are roads and a fair amount of development on both sides, so it’s not particularly wild or even scenic in stretches. The designation seems aspirational to me. But our rivers do need more protection, and there are many interesting historic places on both sides of the river. Congress did authorize parts of the lower Delaware as ‘wild & scenic’ in 2000, but if you paddled it, you’d go in and out of those every few miles. There are no federal facilities, so although the park website calls it a ‘unit’, I don’t think it counts towards 424. Still, just in case I’m wrong, and out of respect for our first Commander in Chief, I humbly post.
Ike didn’t really like his “stuffy” living room above, but it contains some wonderful gifts from around the world, including Prague above the mantle, Korea, Iran and Grant’s fireplace from the White House. Ike preferred to chat with de Gaulle and Khrushchev in his enclosed porch. My favorite room is the den, which is more of a library, but it’s harder to photograph.
The house is well-preserved in 1950’s style, with almost all original artifacts, since the Eisenhowers lived here until it was given to the park service. Mamie’s home furnishings and decor recall her devotion to Ike, their family and all their guests. Much of the site is devoted to the farm & ranch—blue ribbon Angus cattle—, with various barns and related buildings, but there are a few less common features, such as a putting green, skeet range, helipad and Secret Service office.
The ranger didn’t know that Ike was a cheerleader, but she did explain what this place meant to Ike and why they chose it as their only real home as opposed to the dozens of places they lived temporarily. Ike trained the army’s WWI tank corps here in Gettysburg, and he loved to study the battlefield. That explains a lot.
This Virginia park spans the history of Colonial America, from the first settlement and seat of English government to Yorktown which marked the end of British military control. While in theory the park can be visited in a day, take two. The pretty town of Yorktown is nice with a little beach. Jamestown has several areas to see, and the park road connecting them runs through Colonial Williamsburg, which alone is worth time. This is my favorite colonial era park.
Yorktown has a very good visitor center, film and two auto tours. Even I was able to follow what happened, and long story short, the victory was as much or more French than American. Alexander Hamilton led the successful joint French & American assault on the last two key British defensive positions, one of which is eroding into the bay. The Rhode Island Light Infantry Regiment—largely African American—were critical in the assault, which employed bayonets on unloaded muskets to ensure both silence and an aggressive attack. Washington maneuvered his armies & Lafayette executed the siege in their most successful and determinative battle of the war with the assistance of the French fleet blocking the large mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. There are also remnants of the Confederate defense of Richmond on the same battlefield, although that is not the main focus of the park.
Jamestown needs explanation. Simply, there are three parts: 1) the park service Loop Road which is a swampy wooded drive or bike ride through the eastern end of the island, 2) the state’s very well funded living history settlement, and 3) the oldest Jamestowne part that has been run by a private group which predates the park service and is now an affiliated National Historic Site. All three are amazing. I saw a bald eagle, baby turtles, deer and more. At the settlement you can climb aboard recreations of all three ships, visit a Native American village, a reconstruction of the fort and an impressive museum, and there are many helpful staff throughout, some clothed in period garb, making the history extremely accessible. But don’t miss the third part, Olde Jamestowne.
This is the original remote outpost of the Elizabethan era that excited imaginations at the time, including Shakespeare whose Tempest is based on a shipwreck here. The most exciting work today is happening above in the oldest section of the park: an active archaeological dig with many world class discoveries. The fort there is built on the original fort site, and one of the archaeologists who began the dig in the 1990s gave a guided tour. There’s also a museum showcasing their discoveries.
Pocahontas married her husband John Rolfe in the church to her right, her husband witnessed the arrival of the first Africans at Fort Comfort (now Monroe), and the most recent excavation of a well is happening over her left shoulder. One of the gruesome discoveries was evidence of cannibalism among the settlers, but other discoveries speak to the diversity of the colony and its early peace with the natives, thanks mainly to the young woman above.
Please understand this is not Madam CJ Walker, the hair care entrepreneur and millionaire, but a contemporary, Maggie Lena Walker, who helped lay the foundations of the Civil Rights movement through her civic efforts. Maggie’s mother was a slave in the house of Elizabeth Van Lew, a wealthy Richmond lady and top Union spy. Evidently, Maggie’s mother conveyed some of that rebellious spirit to her daughter, who helped organize a school strike when denied the benefits given to white students. Throughout her life, Maggie Walker worked to advance her community, becoming the first African American woman to found and run her own bank, to run an insurance company, a newspaper, a department store and many other civic leadership roles, especially those designed to educate and employ African Americans. Her solidarity with like minded friends including Mary McLeod Bethune and Nannie Burroughs, helped combat Jim Crow, advance women’s suffrage and promote Civil Rights. Even in the old Confederate capital, she helped build a prosperous African American community that avoided both physical destruction like Tulsa and also financial destruction during the Great Depression. The Jackson Ward of Richmond is famous for beautiful old homes, delicious restaurants (try Mama J’s catfish!), businesses and sites where Jazz greats performed. The tour of her home is fascinating and covers history which is so important for all Americans to understand today.
Booker Taliaferro Washington slept outside with the farm animals on the tobacco farm above or crowded in with many other slaves and enslaved children on rag-covered dirt floors. His price was recorded, but no birthday. When Lincoln freed all slaves forever, Booker went to work mining salt for his stepfather. Realizing that this was not much of a life for a boy, he sought education, first trying to teach himself from a spelling book, and then walking 500 miles across Virginia to an African American school near Fort Monroe on the coast. He trained to be a teacher and eventually was asked to start what became Tuskegee Institute, where he hired another teacher born into slavery, George Washington Carver.
Booker T. became the most influential educator in America, in terms of building institutions, guiding policy, and teaching teachers of illiterate freed slaves and under-educated African Americans. WEB DuBois criticized him for being too accommodating with segregation, but Booker T. quietly supported the same anti-segregation campaigns, while working to improve the lives of as many African Americans as possible. Many celebrated his accomplishments, including Teddy Roosevelt, Andrew Carnegie, Harvard (first African American honorary degree), and Eisenhower, who designated this monument. Others resisted, including those in Congress who refused to support or fully fund a park and those in the community who were hostile to his student building a memorial here.
“The happiest people are those who do the most for others. The most miserable are those who do the least.”
The Maryland home was donated by wealthy business partners who wanted to attract people to their lands along the Potomac, and it was built to meet Clara’s specifications. She was all business. The lamp is hung by bandage cloth, and the walls are all supply closets with blankets, food and emergency items. The design is similar to the early Red Cross disaster buildings first used at Johnstown. The top floor windows have Red Cross images so that travelers can see it from the road at night. And the staff had both offices and rooms to live and work. The home is currently empty in preparation for a major restoration, but there are large photos to see what each room looked like furnished.
A week after the Civil War broke out, a contingent of the 6th Massachusetts was attacked in Baltimore while on their way to defend the Capital. Clara Barton tended them in the Senate Chamber with her household materials, and she recognized many as her former students. She asked them to tell their parents to send relief supplies to her, so that she could support the Union’s war effort and care for the wounded. She followed the sounds of battle and pre-positioned wagons of supplies as close to the fighting as possible.
There’s a monument to her in the middle of the bloodiest site at Antietam, where she extracted a bullet from a soldier’s face. She became known as the ‘Angel of the Battlefield’. She followed the fighting for years from Manassas to Spotsylvania, she petitioned Lincoln to help prisoners of war, and she went to Andersonville to walk the thousands of graves identifying ‘missing’ soldiers. Sent to Europe to recuperate, she went to Switzerland to work on getting the US to sign the Geneva Convention and join the International Red Cross. Her tactic was to reframe the Red Cross as also providing disaster relief, and not solely as a war organization, and she prevailed on both. She started First Aid kits and training programs. Her missing soldiers department grew into an important bureau of the Defense Department.
Clara Barton was directly responsible for saving many thousands of lives, and her initiatives save millions. She devoted her life to making this country and the world better and safer. But she never had the right to vote.
Lincoln wanted “malice toward none” and for the Confederates to return their allegiance to the Union, so he let them all go home, with passes, with their horses and even with Union provisions, as long as they gave up their guns. After his son reported to his father about Lee’s surrender at Appomattox in Virginia, Lincoln went to the theater, believing that his charity would prevent further bloodshed, and that night, only five days after the scene above took place, the President was assassinated.
Contrary to the explanation given here, the Confederacy did not rise in response to “northern aggression”. Fort Sumter was not an act of northern aggression. Secession was not northern aggression. The south insisted that the Fugitive Slave Act apply nationally; so much for states’ rights. Even the pamphlet that attempts to give reasons other than slavery for why the Confederates fought, reveals that it was still about slavery: “submit to Abolitionists”, “lose property”, and “our negroes”. And after the insurrection was defeated and federal troops left, the Klan arose and African Americans have been systematically denied their rights for more than 150 years. No honor in that.
The site is beautifully restored to its 1865 appearance, and there are talented living history actors who bemoan how difficult it will be now that they have to plant and harvest their own crops. Not sure how they can get every fence post to look as it did, but somehow still find it difficult to present the main cause of the war plainly. The film is excellent and explains all the details of the surrender, such as that the signing did not occur in the courthouse but in a nearby house also open to the public. Visiting such a superbly preserved and restored place is a wonderful way to appreciate the scene of such an important historic moment.
“You see, in this world there’s two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns, and those who dig. You dig.”
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Grant recognized that although he might not be able to take Richmond with frontal assaults, he could cut it off by taking the rail junction city of Petersburg on the Appomattox River to the south. Lee had more forces in North Carolina, so Grant needed to keep them separated. Grant poured troops, mortars and supplies into the area to besiege both cities. And most importantly, Grant ordered his men to dig: new defenses and longer trenches, to close the gap with the enemy. Over the winter, the captured Fort Harrison near Richmond was reinforced, clearly in sight of Confederate defenses, and it became part of a line of forts beginning to surround Richmond.
The photo above shows examples of siege fortifications—including the cannon aimed right at you—near Battery 9, captured by African American troops. Lee desperately counterattacked inflicting the worst single regimental loss of the war, on the First Maine Heavy Artillery, but at the next fort, the Union held. By now, Grant had far more troops here than Lee and was proceeding to cut off both cities and attack them simultaneously. To avoid being surrounded and running out of moves, Lee withdrew from both cities and fled west. Richmond had fallen. Grant pursued to block Lee before he could move south. Now the race is on, and Union cavalry victories at the Five Forks Battlefield to the west mark the beginning of the end. No longer behind defensive walls, Lee heads west across country towards a town called Appomattox.
Like the Union capital, the Confederate capital was surrounded by a series of forts and fortified trenches, with one complete ring around the city and another outer line of defenses about 2/3 of the way around Richmond. The Confederate earthworks above are massive, up to 15 feet added to the tops of hills, running for miles with deep trenches. In many previous battles, the federal troops staged bloody frontal assaults on similar high-ground, well-defended positions, often losing thousands of men. Going back to the age of castles in Europe, this has proven to be a waste of human lives with little prospect for success. In the Revolutionary War, Lafayette knew that siege warfare against cannon required carefully building successive trenches at night to approach under cover. General Washington listened to him and took Yorktown using that technique.
In 1862, General McClellan tried to take Richmond, leading troops up the York River. Despite fighting at the exact same defenses around Yorktown 75 years after Washington, McClellan still relied primarily on mass frontal assaults without trench cover, revealing a dumbfounding lack of literacy. Robert E. Lee replaced the Confederate commander and executed seven days of battles that forced the Union to retreat from Virginia.
In 1864, after Spotsylvania, Grant tried again at Cold Harbor, again wasting most of 6,000 troops in an hour. Lee was prepared to defend Richmond again from another expected northeast attack, but here at Fort Harrison, Grant managed to swing his troops around to attack from the southeast in a surprise attack on 29 September 1864. General Burnham was killed, but the fort was taken. African American regiments were critical in these Union battles.
This victory gave the Union a chance to control the James River which runs through Richmond, exposing southern rail lines to Union forces, and it forced Lee to redeploy his defensive troops. If Grant could just gain one more victory at Petersburg, he could lay siege to Richmond, which was Lee’s great fear. Richmond was critical to the Confederate war effort.
Even today, Richmond is the hub of Virginia’s road and rail network. The Tredegar Iron Works—now gone—was a massive operation supplying artillery, ammunition, and armor plating for ironclad ships. The large plateau in the city housed its Chimborazo Hospital—now the site of a large park and a small medical museum—and was full of troops in various stages of recovery or not. Disease likely killed more soldiers than battle, as troops who had never been far from home suddenly congregated in close quarters. If Richmond was cut off from the south, then their ships couldn’t sail downriver, and the only safe access would be from the east without rivers, good roads or rail.
The war, blockades, lost slave labor and plantation burnings devastated the Confederate economy, and their currency was nearly worthless. If Richmond became surrounded, the Confederacy might collapse entirely. With one more victory, the war might end.
Zero Carbon Travel 