May 2016

The Yorktown Battlefield National Park in Virginia has a museum and film explaining the battle.  you can tour the battlefield in your car or bicycle.  You can walk from the National Park to Main St of the town where some houses and buildings from the 1700s still stand.  On the west end of town is the Virginia Yorktown Victory Center where a Revolutionary Army Camp and a 1700s farm are set up with period costumed interpreters explaining items like the tools army surgeons used. 

     In August 1781 British General Cornwallis moved his troops to Yorktown to establish a naval base there.  When a French Fleet heads there from the West Indies, it blocks a British fleet from landing at Yorktown.  The Continental Army and the French Army surround the British Army on land as the French Fleet blockade the harbor at sea.  After nine days of artillery bombardment British General Cornwallis surrendered in October.