Valley Forge Audio Tour {A History Field Trip Idea}

Valley Forge is only about an hour from Lancaster, and is rich in history and experiences for families to discover and discuss the American Revolution.

Plus, we love that they offer a Digital Audio Tour, making it easy and convenient to experience the history and beauty of the park at your own pace.

The Digital Audio Tour

The tour starts at the Visitor Center. It’s a good idea to begin here, even if you have already purchased the audio tour before you visit. Take the time to use the restrooms (your trip will be more enjoyable!) 🙂 The tour will follow this map, and take about 2-3 hours, depending on your pace.

Starting at the visitor center, the audio tour begins with a brief introduction. It will tell you when to start driving. The entire trip is designed to be done in 2-3 hours, and will time perfectly if you average a 15 miles per hour driving speed.

In between tour stops (where you get out and walk around) you’ll enjoy traditional music of the 18th century. Have your kids listen to the music and pick out instruments they hear or tunes they recognize. As the audio tour introduces the next step, you’ll notice very well-performed and characterized voices. Just as if you’d be listening to an audio book!

The first stop is at the City of Huts. This tells the history of how George Washington had over 2,000 huts built for his army. Did you know how he convinced his army to build them so fast? He made it a competition!

You are typically allowed to enter these huts and see what it would have been like for 12 men to sleep in bunks stacked three high, but when we visited they were locked due to COVID. However, no worries! A little later in the tour there were some open to try out! I’ll show you those soon.

Be sure not to miss the Redoubt! Take the path to the right of the huts, and not far along the trail you’ll see how they protected themselves from attack. This is a really neat thing for kids especially to venture through and imagine what it would have been like to be one of the ones on the lookout for the British!

We loved how the redoubt was hidden behind grass walls, so it truly was hidden from the enemy!

When you are finished exploring this area, hop back in your vehicle and start the audio tour again. As you drive to your next spot, you’ll pass an open hut on the right-hand side. We pulled over here so we could see inside a hut and test out the sleeping conditions. 🙂

The next stop is the National Memorial Arch. We chose to just view this from our vehicle, and move on to the next part of the tour, which was where George Washington lived. There is a decent amount of walking here, but its worth it!

You first see the huts where his “body guards” lived—the Commander in Cheif’s Guards.

There is also a beautiful statue of George Washington—one that even Mrs. Washington said portrayed him better than any other artist ever has.

Continue following the path, turn to the right, and you’ll come to George Washington’s house! (It’s not the big one with the porch, but the one closer to the train station.) Typically you’re allowed to enter his house, but it was closed for us due to COVID.

We were getting tired for the rest of the trip, so we enjoyed listening to the audio but we didn’t get out again until the cannons—Artillery Park. Definitely worth getting out for by the way! It’s a very short hike, you can see them from the parking lot, and a great photo opportunity once you reach them.

The kids had fun finding and naming the parts of the cannon, which you can see identified in the lower right part of this photo.

Did you know we have a growing YouTube channel, featuring short videos of field trips and local hidden secrets? Be sure to subscribe and comment to say hi! Here’s our Valley Forge Encampment video: