Saratoga National Historical Park

29Sep19

Wouldn’t you know it – not only did I arrive just an hour or so before the Saratoga National Historical Park closed but I had to battle a persistent rainstorm.

Despite those obstacles staring (and hitting) me in the face, I made my way around the Revolutionary War battlefield site and saw pretty much all I intended to.

It helped that I was one of the few patrons in the park that day.

Saratoga National Historical Park is located in upstate New York and commemorates on of our nation’s most important battles. It marked the first major victory by the American forces. And it was also where eventual traitor Benedict Arnold was an American hero.

Like other battlefields in the National Park Service, Saratoga is best visited through an auto tour road. This one has 10 wayside interpretive stops with the typical historical buildings, monuments, artillery pieces and historical signs along the way.

My favorite wayside stop is stop number two. This is the location of Neilson farm which not only includes a restored farmhouse but a pair of monuments.

Then there is the seventh stop on the auto tour – the Breymann Redoubt. Here’s where the Boot Monument is located. This monument commemorates Arnold’s leg wound which left him crippled for the rest of his life and was, in some ways, the impetus for him to turn traitor later in the war.

I actually toured the Saratoga National Historical Park over two days. The second day was devoted to two stops outside the main battlefield site. I first visited the Saratoga Monument, a 155-foot obelisk commemorating the American victory. I had a little difficultly located the monument with my GPS so I did it the old fashioned way – I kept driving until a saw a large pointy thing in the distance and drove that way.

Adjacent to Saratoga Monument is Victory Woods, which marked the final encampment site of the British Army. I would have enjoyed a quick hike there but I had little time and besides that the grass was really wet that morning and I had on my dress shoes. I didn’t think that was a good combination to begin the day with.

My second stop outside the main battlefield site was the Schuyler House, a restored 1777 country house of American General Philip Schuyler and the father of the “Schuyler Sisters” made famous in the Broadway musical “Hamilton.” I limited my visit here to the outside of the house since I was there two hours before its scheduled opening.

Saratoga National Historical Park isn’t the best battlefield I’ve toured in the National Park Service. It is however, a good solid park and one I would return to again.

 

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