A City of Huts

A City of Huts. Refuge for the Winter. , Welcome to the fourth largest city in America. Arriving in this rural area in the winter of 1777, soldiers immediately began building 2000 log huts for shelter, earthworks for defense, and rubble roads to keep out the deep, boot-pulling mud., General Washington issued orders on the sizes and locations of the huts. Soldiers cleared all the trees from the countryside for miles around, dragging back the lumber to build log walls, shingle roofs, and rough bunks and stools. Most of this mighty task was finished within a month, despite shortages of tools. For six months the log city’s population rivaled Philadelphia, New York and Boston., “General Washington keeps his station at Valley Forge. I was there when the Army first began to build huts. They appeared to me like a family of beavers, everyone busy; some carrying logs, others mud, and the rest plastering them together. The whole was raised in a few days and it is a curious collection of buildings, in the true rustic order.”Thomas Paine to Benjamin Franklin , 16 May 1778. , As Steuben described in his “Regulations,” in each brigade location, typically the smallest huts housed the soldiers and were located on the front line. As one’s rank increased, so did the size of the hut. The commissary kitchen was placed at the rear, farthest from the enlisted men., “The encampment was regularly laid out; the streets ran in parallel lines, neatness and order prevailed; and in viewing it from the hills, it had the appearance of a little city.”William Hull, 8th Massachusetts Regt..