Washington Crossing: A Tale of Two Parks

Along the banks of the Delaware River—in what is now Upper Makefield Township on the Pennsylvania side and Hopewell Township on the New Jersey side—lie a pair of preternaturally venerated sites, indelibly linked by their shared connection to one of the most notable military enterprises the world has ever known. That would be the legendary water-borne crossing by Gen. George Washington’s troops on Christmas night 1776—a traversal fraught with difficulty by “the force of the current, the sharpness of the frost, the darkness of the night, the ice which [formed] during the operation, and a high wind,” as described by one Continental officer, Maj. James Wilkinson.[1] Prior to this undertaking, the Rhode Island Quaker turned warrior, Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene, had mused, “I hope this is the dark part of the night, which generally is just before day.”[2] The metaphorical dawn that ensued from the “Ten Crucial Days” campaign (December 25, 1776 through January 3, 1777) reversed the momentum of the war for independence just when it appeared the insurgent army—and with it perhaps the cause it embodied—was on the verge of collapse.

In the immediate aftermath of that endeavor and the ensuing victory over the German brigade occupying Trenton, Ambrose Serle, private secretary to Adm. Richard Lord Howe, expressed his concern that “it will tend to revive the drooping spirits of the rebels and increase their force,” and regretted that “it will detain me probably for a further space of time from my longed-for home, and the happy enjoyment of my family and friends.”[3] Indeed. Reflecting on this turn of events from a more distant vantage point, the English historian Sir George Otto Trevelyan famously opined, “It may be doubted whether so small a number of men ever employed so short a period of time with greater and more lasting effects upon the history of the world.”[4] And Lord George Germain, Britain’s secretary of state for North America and principal war strategist, may have best and most succinctly denoted the import of this episode in his penetrative observation to parliament in 1779: “all our hopes were blasted by that unhappy affair at Trenton.”^[5]

 Down by the River: An Overview of the Two Parks

Although created at different times and independently of each other, the Pennsylvania and New Jersey parks that straddle the Delaware River serve to commemorate the same event and offer a variety of historical features that complement each other. They function as separate entities but are engaged in a collaborative effort to preserve and promote their much-chronicled legacy.