Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 December 1895 — DESERTED VALLEY FORGE. [ARTICLE]

DESERTED VALLEY FORGE.

The Historic Place Is Now Only a Crumbling Ruin. One of the most historic, if Indeed not the most historic, of the deserted towns of the United States is Valley Forge, a place forever consecrated by the martyrdom of the revolutionary army. The name tells the story of such patriotism and self-sacrifice as the world has seldom seen, and the wooded hills about Valley creek are thickly sown with the memories of Washington and his ragged, starving continentals. The quaint stone house that was the dwelling of the commander-in-chief through the dreary winter, the grassy mouE-ds that once mounted the clumsy artillery of the American army, the one remaining gravestone of a Connecticut militiaman and the dimly traced cellars of the street of log huts on the hill slope are visited by hundreds of sightseers each year. But Valley Forge has more than historic charm. The little town slumbers in one of the most beautiful valleys in Pennsylvania, and its prosperity Is a pai't of its past. The massive stone mills are silent, the broad water tumbles over the old dam in play, Instead of being fettered to turn the wheels of factories, and the rows of stone tenements where hundreds of busy men and women lived and went to and from the mills, are tenanted by two or three families, one to a dozen or more dwellings. Valley Forge is again a farming hamlet, and the village that grew up in manufacturing industries is deserted. During the revolutionary war the place was raided by Hessians, but was subsequently built up and a number of factories established. After 1882 one by one these places were forced to close, and to-day the once busy seat of industry is a mere farming hamlet. The dwellings are crumbling to ruins, and vines and mosses and tangled undergrowth have crept over all. Valley Forge, like other deserted places, has its ghost. It is said that the spirits of the dead revolutionary soldiers flit along the hillsides on stormy nights and visit the shadowy spots where they once gathered around the camp fire, and that ghostly camp fires have been seen flickering among the trees on starless nights and the faint echo of a challenge and countersign from the lips of some spirit sentinels has been heard.