Washington Slept Here Before Valley Forge: Phun Philly Phacts

EASTERN MONTGOMERY COUNTY, PA —Off the Pennsylvania Turnpike, there's a field next to an old building on Bethlehem Pike. Nearby is a town called Fort Washington where there's really no fort still standing.

While Valley Forge gets all the attention, George Washington spent some time in this neck of the woods for a few months in the fall and winter of 1777.

The general was licking his wounds following the Continental Army's defeat at the Battle of Germantown.

Washington needed a place to bunker down during the Philadelphia campaign of the American Revolutionary War and chose a swath of land in Upper Dublin and Whitemarsh townships. This was before Valley Forge.

Washington set up an encampment, settling down from Nov. 2 to Dec. 11 in the Whitemarsh Hills next to the historic Hope Lodge, the house used as headquarters by Washington's Surgeon General John Cochran.

The current Fort Washington State Park includes the area where Washington and the Continental Army were located during the Battle of White Marsh. The park's Fort Hill marks the spot where a temporary fort once stood.

But George and company couldn't stick around for long.

Between Dec. 5 and Dec. 8, 1777, Washington and his troops encountered the British.

British commander General William Howe held the high ground, watching the American lines from the bell tower of St. Thomas' Episcopal Church at Bethlehem Pike and Camp Hill Road in present-day Chestnut Hill, where the British Army was encamped on Dec. 5.

Howe decided to win the war then and there.

For three days, the Battle of White Marsh took the form of a series of skirmishes.

Howe led a sizable contingent of troops in one last attempt to destroy Washington and the Continental Army before the onset of winter. But the skirmishes failed and Howe called off the attack without engaging Washington in a decisive conflict.

It was the last major engagement of 1777 between British and American forces. George escaped to Valley Forge.

And as they say, the rest is history.