"Best American Revolutionary War Battlefields to Visit?" Topic

Which are the best American Revolutionary War battlefields to visit?

Saratoga

The Minuteman Trail, Concord, MA is a lovely hike with historic buildings along the way.
link

Brandywine is a lovely drive.

There are a number of well preserved sites. Saratoga is excellent, and the site in the South are amazing. Guilford Courthouse, King's Mountain, Cowpens, and Fort 96 are all well worth seeing.

Monmouth. Although the site of Lee's morning fight is lost to development, the rest of the site is preserved, and has marked trails. New visitor center/museum too!

Minuteman park is the only one I've visited and I'd agree with miniMo. It is a nice hike with markers along the way describing events and showing where British troops were killed. The park also sells a nice booklet that shiws events all along the trail back to Boston.

Yorktown,
but really enjoyed The American Revolution War Museum in Philadelphia and a trip to Valley Forge would make it a weekend.

Yorktown is very close to Colonial Williamsburg.

Guilford Courthouse is a wonderful battlefield to tramp just outside Greensboro.

I have only visited a few but found Kings Mountain to be excellent. Liked 96 too.

Guilford Courthouse, King's Mountain and Cowpens
are great sites. Cowpens is easily walked in
30 minutes (the battle site, not including the
museum).

Guilford CH needs much more time, since the site
covers all three American lines and there is a
really good diorama using which one can study the
movements of the two armies, plus an excellent
museum.

If you take the longest day of the year, and begin
at Cowpens, you can actually take in all three sites
in about 15 hours, starting at daybreak and finishing
at Guilford as dark falls.

Cowpens site is located near Gaffney SC, Kings Mountain
is just over the SC/NC line near Blacksburg SC and
Guilford CH is located near Greensboro NC.

There is a 4th site, Fort 96, but it is located near
Ninety-Six, SC and is to the E of the other two SC
sites.

Driving time from Gaffney SC to Greensboro is about
2:45 (I-85 runs by all three sites) and Kings Mountain
makes a nice driving break a bit less than half-way
to Guilford CH.

Concord, Valley Forge, Monmouth, and Guilford Courthouse

Saratoga
Guildford Courthouse
Princeton

Being in the South, I cannot comment on the northern battlefields.
As Ed points out North Carolina and South Carolina is full of battlefields. You could spend an entire vacation in just those two areas.
he mentioned the main ones but you can also visit Camden in South Carolina. I also never made it to Charleston, so I am not savvy on the markers in that area.
Savannah is nice. A gem is Pensacola but the best museum is not at the fort site but downtown. A hole in the wall of several building adjacent to each other which is stocked with displays.
Speaking of hidden gems, Ed forgot to mention the Alamace battlefield near Guilford Courthouse. It is about the 1775 revolt of the Regulators. One interesting concept that they employed when I was there was to place golf pin flags along the front lines and at key positions. It was amazing how close the firing lines were to each other.

Guilford Courthouse is my favorite and is an excellent battlefield to visit and the battle to study.

Cowpens is good, as is Yorktown, Bennington, Saratoga, and Fort Stanwix.

Cowpens and Kings Mountain.

I suggest Stony Point, located 10 miles south of West Point. It is a rather small battlefield, but gives one a very clear idea of the challenge the Americans faced in assaulting the British positions. There is a very nice museum and a visit here can be combined with a visit to West Point.

There are quite a few great ones. I think everything has been mentioned. My favorites have been Cowpens, Kings Mountain, Guilford and Monmouth. Fort Moultrie is great outside of Charleston. I also found Camden to be okay, but not much preserved when I visited. I need to do a better visit to Brandywine in the future since with better books on the battle, it is now easier to follow the action.

Monmouth, Saratoga and Yorktown

Saratoga and Hubbarton.

BTC:

One of the best (and perhaps least known) aspects of the Brandywine battlefield is the Birmingham Hill area. Though it is largely in private hands, there is a small car park with signs on the crest of Birmingham Hill. There is also a walking trail as well which leads over to Osborne Hill. Just down the road from there is Sandy Hollow where Lafayette got shot in the leg. The area there is a township park, which also has a small parking lot with signs explaining the history of the park.

Hubbardton battlefield. Is a small action and very easy to follow. There have been almost no development in that area although some of the woods are now much fuller then at the time of the battle. If you have copy o Benson J. Lossing's Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution turn to his sketch of the sucker brook area looking up to the ridge. The view has changed very little.

Camden is interesting as it is the least developed (probably because the rebels lost). I've visited Saratoga, Oriskany, Fort Stanwix/Schyler, many of the forts on the lakes, Guildford Courthouse, Yorktown, Kings Mountain and Coupons. All are interesting. I enjoyed Kings Mountain most, but that was probably more to do with it being a special event weekend when I went so there was a lot going on. The southern sites show that it was as much a civil war as a war for independence – only 1 Brit at Kings Mountain for example. I was at Buford for a commemoration of the "massacre" and was afraid to speak in case I got lynched such was the anti-British vitriol! Best value would be the New York state area because you get 3 wars for your money – French Indian/7 Years War, American Revolution and War of 1812.

BTC:

One of the best (and perhaps least known) aspects of the Brandywine battlefield is the Birmingham Hill area. Though it is largely in private hands, there is a small car park with signs on the crest of Birmingham Hill. There is also a walking trail as well which leads over to Osborne Hill where the elite British and German battalions formed up for the assault.

Just down the road from there is Sandy Hollow where Lafayette got shot in the leg (there is a marker in the park). That area is a township park, which also has a small parking lot with signs explaining the history of the battle.

The Civil War Trust is now saving AWI sites too. They recently bought some land at Princeton, Brandywine and Guilford CH.

I have been to Saratoga, Bennington, Concord, Brandywine and Yorktown, but would like to do the SC and NC sites as well.

+1 for the Civil War Trust.

Yorktown

White Plains! Not really, go to Yorktown

It has been some time since I went to AWI battlefields, and the ones I did have probably changed. Kings Mountain was the one I felt best resembled what the battlefield would have been like when the battle was fought. Lexington Green was also good when I was there for the bicentenial back in 1975. Now it would probably take the original cast for me to be up that early to watch a reenactment. I also liked Toconderoga.

I like Yorktown. It was probably the most recent one I went to. However I have never been confindent that what are supposedly AWI fortifications were not really Confederate fortifications from the ACW.

I've been to pretty much all of them, but the best are Lexington/Concord, Monmouth, and Guilford Courthouse.

Camden – most interesting and really unspoiled. The issue is that since there is no battlefield park or NPS type deal there you have to be well briefed on what to look for, where the lines were, etc.
Brandywine also a fascinating visit – but as with many of the others from the 1775-1777 northern campaigns suburban modern reality encroaches in places. Ditto with GCH.
EC

Here are my suggestions:

a weekend trip to Boston will keep anyone interested in the AWI very busy;

Saratoga, Fort Ticonderoga and Bennington (battlefield in NY; museum and monument in VT) are worth a long weekend when the leaves change color, with Hubbardton (mentioned above) in VT a short ride away; and

Stony Point (mentioned above) plus West Point (with a visit to the West Point Museum). Stay at the Thayer Hotel on the West Point campus. Go for a weekend when Army is playing football at home. Just be prepared for the traffic.

I've done all of the above on several occasions, save for Hubbardton which I hope to get to one of these days.

Many battlefields host re-enactments. If you can, try to co-ordinate your visit with the local re-enactments. I went to the largest FIW re-enactment in North America years ago at Fort Ti. Great experience.

FYI, the late William Casey (of OSS and CIA fame) wrote a very detailed guide to visiting AWI battlefields. If you can find a copy, it's worth a look.

Enjoy the trip.

Moore's Creek National Battlefield is nice, relaxing and compact. I nice place to visit in the area.

I did not even know about the Moore's Creek site.

I was at Yorktown … visited in '82 … I was not there during the actually battle though …