(dramatic music) (bright music) - Jockey Hollow is 1,400 acres of land.

- [Narrator] From farmland to winter quarters for 10,000 of General George Washington's troops, to its founding as the country's first National Historical Park.

- These are the jewels of America, these are the stories of America.

- This area of New Jersey was really almost the military capital of the Revolutionary War for the Northeast.

- [Narrator] The land known as Jockey Hollow is still a refuge.

- I think the community recognizes how special this place is.

- [Narrator] Where history is reenacted... - [Soldiers] Aim!

- [Narrator] And always respected.

- I think it's important because of its role in the American Revolution, but it also tells us a story about America.

(melodious music) - [Narrator] "Treasures Of New Jersey: Jockey Hollow, Morristown National Historical Park."

(melodious music) Funding for this program is provided by the S. Dillard and Adrienne Kirby Family Philanthropic Fund, the F.M.

Kirby Foundation, Kim And Finn Wentworth, and Friends of Jockey Hollow.

(melodious music) It's an expanse of curated New Jersey open space, with more than 20 miles of hiking trails, and a historic farmhouse and garden next to an apple orchard, surrounded with traditional split rail fencing.

(melodious music) Jockey Hollow, part of Morristown National Historical Park, is a sanctuary about 30 miles west of New York City.

(melodious music) But the wooded oasis is also a portal into an often-overlooked chapter of the American Revolution.

Not a battleground, but a critical refuge where 10,000 troops survived the snowstorms and freezing temperatures of the winter of 1779 to 1780, in log huts the soldiers built by hand.

Every spring, a group of Revolutionary War re-enactors pay tribute to the historic encampment for a weekend.

- [Soldier] Shut down.

Cast about.

- [Narrator] The regiments come from all over the Northeast, giving history lessons to onlookers and living as Continental soldiers did in 1779.

From the fields where re-enactors assemble near its historic farmhouse, to hillsides and forests where Revolutionary War soldiers spent winters, Jockey Hollow is the largest of four parts of the nation's first historical park.

- Jockey Hollow has about 1,400 acres of land, it's part of Morristown National Historical Park, which includes three other noncontiguous areas.

Washington's headquarters area, the New Jersey Brigade area, Fort Nonsense, and, of course, the Jockey Hollow area.

- [Narrator] Thomas Ross served as Superintendent of Morristown National Park from 2013 through 2024.

- Annually, visitation is between 275 and 300,000 people, and the vast majority of those people are here utilizing the Jockey Hollow area.

I would say somewhere in the vicinity of maybe 225,000 a year.

So, on average, you're probably seeing 3 to 500 people, sometimes more, a day, using this area of the park.

So the leaf peeping and the foliage is beautiful, so we'll have folks here to check out the foliage.

And, of course, we've got our visitors that come to learn more about the Revolutionary War or what happened here in Morristown.

When people come, they generally come to our visitor center here at Jockey Hollow.

- You want to go to these others, so...

This sits in this direction, so basically take the park screen out the back windows here.

- [Narrator] The visitor center features a replica log hut, and a mural based on research, written accounts, and a rare existing sketch from the time, depicting the Continental Army during its winter break from fighting.

- You can't understand what's happening on the battlefield in July without understanding what's happening in the campgrounds in January.

Jockey Hollow matters because it tells that side of the story.

- [Narrator] Steven Elliott worked summers as a seasonal ranger at the park, teaching visitors about its history before becoming an American military historian.

Elliott's book, "Surviving the Winters: Housing Washington's Army During the American Revolution," explores the often-overlooked role of winter camps.

- In November of 1779, there was a buildup of British troops in New York City, and Washington worries that this might mean they're planning to attack into New Jersey.

Because of that, he decides he wants the army placed at a remote location that's further away from New York, that's up in the hills and highlands of northern New Jersey, where they'll be more secure from attack.

- [Narrator] Washington knew Morristown.

He and some of the army wintered there in 1777.

But now he needed a place to build a camp for 10,000 troops.

- Teams look at everywhere from the Sourland Mountains down by Trenton, all the way up to the Great Falls where Patterson is today.

And after that month-long search, they settle on Jockey Hollow.

- They needed a viable source of water for the 10,000 plus men that were encamped here.

And we have constant water running here because of the vast number of springs that come up through this area.

And the quality, obviously, of the water, even to this day, is very high.

(melodious music) - [Narrator] Major General Nathanael Greene scouted Jockey Hollow and described the location in a letter to Washington written November 27th, 1779.

"There is wood, and I am in hopes, sufficient for the purpose of hunting and firing, if it is used properly.

There is water in plenty, though in some places it will be some distance to fetch."

- He's looking for what every real estate agent will tell you, it's always about location, location, location.

- [Narrator] Steven Santucci is a high school history teacher at West Morris Mendham High School, just a ten-minute drive from the park.

- Some of the artifacts, you could actually find at Jockey Hollow.

Archeologists since the 1930s, and even going back further, have found artifacts similar to what you have here today.

I give 'em an artifact, they start asking questions.

Now they're engaged into it, and then they do research on the names and the places in it, and now they have that personal connection.

That's what got me excited about history, the first time I found an artifact in my backyard and I started asking questions.

- [Narrator] Santucci is also a member of the 2nd New Jersey Regiment, Helm's Company, who reenact Revolutionary War events.

- The clothes are typical 18th century clothes you find.

You have a waistcoat, which is a sleeve coat.

So you'd wear your shirt, which is not only your shirt, but your underwear.

It goes to your knee.

Then you wear this or a sleeve waistcoat over that shirt.

- [Narrator] In 2009, Santucci and fellow re-enactors helped make a documentary about the Jockey Hollow encampment.

- The bulk of the army arrives December 1st.

The men take to their grounds that they've been assigned.

They begin clearing the remaining parts of the land, and then they begin constructing their huts.

- [Narrator] Jockey Hollow's 18th century trees were huge hardwoods, nothing like the 21st century new growth.

- The army needed a lot of timber to construct the huts, like the ones that you see behind me.

As well as fuel.

You have 10,000 men that need to light their fireplaces every day throughout the winter.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Two winters earlier, the army tried hut building at Valley Forge, but unsanitary conditions led to disease and nearly 2,000 soldiers died.

When they marched into Jockey Hollow, the Continental Army and General Washington were better prepared for winter.

- By the time the army got here, they were more experienced, more disciplined, better organized.

They were used to the hardships of being soldiers, they were used to the difficulties that came with winter quarters and campaigns.

- [Narrator] The soldiers' living quarters were simple, there was a single fireplace for cooking and heat for the 12 soldiers in each hut.

And with snow already on the ground, the soldiers had to build quickly.

- They had quartermasters ship all sorts of woodworking tools, axes, saws, planes, etc, and the men themselves were more experienced in building.

So it only took about two weeks from the time the army arrived, for most soldiers to chop down the trees and build them into huts.

- [Narrator] The huts built in the winter of 1779 and 1780 are long gone, but replicas were built on a Jockey Hollow hillside in the 1930s.

In the 1960s, the huts were rebuilt.

Those replicas are being replaced with more accurate reproductions, using 18th century techniques as often as possible.

- This is the second of the five huts which will be replaced in total.

- [Narrator] Timothy Henderson is a National Park Service exhibit specialist.

- These huts were made by contractors that were hired by the Department of Interior, by the park service.

They brought in heavy equipment, earth movers, tractors, bulldozers, and built them very quickly and very perfectly for what they are.

If you look at the ends of the logs, you can see how there are these chattering marks from a chainsaw.

Whereas our logs are ax-cut at the ends, to bring them to that chiseled point.

We believe that what we're doing is a much more honest exhibit.

- [Narrator] Henderson and his historic architecture conservation and engineering maintenance assistance team are wrestling these logs into place without the convenience of modern heavy machinery.

- This is really a skill none of us had.

This really requires mastery of hand tools, chisels, crosscut saws, ax work, and that's definitely a skill that's increasingly lost on tradespeople right now.

(melodious music) - [Narrator] The reconstruction team put together clues from historical sources to design these huts.

- One of the main points of this exhibit is to provoke questions, so anyone familiar with tools is going to see things and ask questions.

- [Mathew Grubel] Let's drop it.

- [Narrator] Mathew Grubel is a preservation specialist who studies colonial building techniques.

- It's starting to split this way, and set.

We're hand splitting shingles again, four-foot-long oak shingles, and we're going to put on a roof that's really representative of what was here.

- We're using hardwood timber harvested from this region, specifically white oak.

There's irregularities in our logs, which give the huts the authentic appearance.

We did have several days last year, when we had to work in the snow.

Obviously, the ice becomes a concern and we have to move carefully on frozen material, but I have not experienced a winter that compares to what Washington and his soldiers experienced.

- [Narrator] Visitors in the 21st century won't experience a winter like the one of 1779, but will get a sense of the magnitude of the encampment.

- We'd like the people to get some sense of what a line of huts looked like, and its impact on the forest.

I mean, imagine a full brigade.

Imagine two brigades.

Now imagine 10 brigades.

(melodious music) - [Narrator] But even with sturdy shelter, the winter would still prove a tremendous challenge, with close to 100 inches of snow.

- When they're arriving in December of 1779, things are bleak.

- [Narrator] Jude Pfister is the chief of cultural resources at Morristown National Historical Park, overseeing collections at Washington's Headquarters Museum next to the Ford Mansion, where George Washington wintered.

- It was the worst winter on the Eastern seaboard in anyone's living memory at the time.

So that just kind of added to the misery that the American army was facing.

- [Narrator] Years of fighting as the underdog had taken its toll on the finances and morale of the Continental Army.

Looking back, as the winter ended, General Washington wrote to the Marquis De Lafayette, "The oldest people now living in this country do not remember so hard a winter as the one we are now emerging from.

In a word, the severity of the frost exceeded anything of the kind that had ever been experienced in this climate before."

- Washington is probably more concerned about food and starvation then, than at almost any other point during the war.

- These men went days without food because the roads were impassable.

Desertion was very high, because now you're so deep into the war, you're like sixth, seventh year into the war, people get bored, they get tired of it, it's draining on them, they just want it to go away.

(melodious music) - These are items that were found at Jockey Hollow over the years.

One of the things which points to the being a winter, distressing winter encampment, are these sets of ice creepers, which you would fasten to your shoe.

Axe heads, which were absolutely necessary, there were no chainsaws to take down trees.

Cooking and eating, being the never-ending story, this is a shovel that had been turned into a frying pan.

- [Narrator] But first-hand accounts of life at Jockey Hollow are scarce.

One of the most famous was published in 1830, almost 50 years after the war.

- This is the first edition of Joseph Plumb Martin, "Narrative of some of the adventures, dangers, and sufferings of a Revolutionary soldier, interspersed with anecdotes of incidents that occurred within his own observation."

- [Narrator] This first edition of Martin's book was found in the park's collection in the 1950s.

Lightly edited, it was re-published with the title "Private Yankee Doodle," and is still in print.

- When I first started reenacting my mentor said, "You got to read this."

He said, "It's our Bible."

And it's because it's a first-person account of a soldier.

And the one thing when you read the chapters on Jockey Hollow, it's the cold.

He's always talking about the cold and the hunger.

- He says they were naked, fatigued, and starved, "Forced to march many a weary mile in winter, to build us habitations to starve and suffer in."

- [Narrator] But the story of Jockey Hollow isn't just about the soldiers.

When the Continental Army arrived in the area in 1779, they were allowed to build on part of wealthy landowner Henry Wick's 1,400 acre farm.

(melodious music) - So you have 10,000 soldiers arriving at a time when New Jersey's population is only 120,000, so it's roughly a 10% boost in the number of people living in the state.

And as for this area in Morris County, overwhelmingly rural, the town of Morristown might only have like 300 people living there, sort of have, essentially, the city, what would be the fifth largest city in the United States, appear overnight, is quite a change for the locals.

- [Narrator] And this population explosion needed food, some of which came from local farmers, who now lived side-by-side with the troops.

- A lot of the residents, the farmers, their land was occupied by the soldiers.

Mr. Wick was one of them and he actually had the largest parcel.

- [Narrator] Anne Bukata began volunteering at the park in 2009, giving tours of the Wick farmhouse in colonial costume.

- My main function here is when people come in, just to sort of educate them about the small points of the Revolutionary War, which are how the common folk and the common soldier lived.

The general and his two aides were given these two rooms, and they set up, those are their camp cots that they use in their tents when they're on campaign, and then they bring them in to winter quarters for the six or seven months.

Their whole property was inundated by soldiers.

But at that point, I think they were very committed to the process.

This area of New Jersey, and I really never knew this till I became a volunteer, and I've lived here all my life, was really almost the military capital of the Revolutionary War for the Northeast.

- [Narrator] When land for the historical park was purchased, the Wick house was one of the few remaining original structures.

- When the property was given over to the park in 1930, the house still had no electricity, no running water.

You know, they'd use kerosene for lamps.

They had a wood burning stove here.

But it was all very comfortable, you know, wallpaper, and little curtains, and beds, and, you know, they had a pump on the well, and the privy.

(melodious music) - [Narrator] An equally important element of the Wick farm story, is the garden next to it.

(melodious music) - [Beth Hamerschlag] Everything that's planted here was something that the Wick family would have known.

So there's things for, obviously, eating.

There's things for dying clothes.

There's medicinal herbs.

- [Narrator] Beth Hamerschlag spends many spring and summer days working alongside other volunteers with the Northern New Jersey Unit of the Herb Society of America.

- How are your dahlias doing?

Are they good?

We don't know what exactly they had in their garden, but we've tried to our best efforts, to keep it to things they would've known at that time, and used at that time.

(melodious music) This garden is an important feature to understanding the Wick family and their life here, and what it was like to be a colonial family at the time.

We say, like, "I'm tending to the beets," and I can buy beets in the grocery store, but these beets would have been their life source, and if the crop failed, then you would be looking at a really rough winter or your own demise, and I think we all feel the continuum of that.

- [Narrator] This isn't just about history, the garden is also about community.

Each week, some of the vegetables and herbs are collected, sorted, and then hand-delivered to the Morris County Interfaith Food Pantry.

- Hi, how are you doing?

- Good, how are you?

- Let me take that from you.

- Thank you.

Thank you.

(melodious music) - [Narrator] The garden, the house, and the replica huts are big draws at Jockey Hollow, and get upgrades and attention.

But elsewhere in the park, monuments and markers often need updating.

- Our desire is to provide the visiting public with as accurate information as we do have it, and we continue to learn more as we go along, through archeology and other research that takes place, so it's a constant evolving, learning situation.

- [Narrator] For decades, visitors to Jockey Hollow could walk through a replica hospital and pay respects to what was called the "soldiers cemetery."

There was a problem though.

- The National Park Service maintained a structure there, a hospital-style building.

In the 1970s, as the hospital deteriorated, the building was actually taken down.

And over time, as we've undertaken archeology, we've done ground penetrating radar, etc, we've learned that this hospital was actually not located here.

And we have no evidence that anyone from the Continental Army, or any human being, period, was ever buried here.

- [Narrator] Archeologists are also turning up evidence that helps explain how the soldiers survived the winter and avoided starvation.

- These are 30 bone fragments, probably cow.

We seem to be finding as the years go by, in more recent archeology, evidence of... Maybe not feasting, but certainly not starvation level either.

And the reason we still do this is because history is still something that we're learning.

The history out of Jockey Hollow, or any site like that, is kinda like an onion, we've all heard that expression, there are many layers.

- [Narrator] Separating historic facts from fiction is not easy.

One of the most famous Jockey Hollow stories centers on the youngest daughter of Henry Wick.

Temperance, known as Tempe, lived in the farmhouse during the winter encampment.

She became best known through a secondhand story published 90 years later.

- She is a local legend.

So in 1870, Reverend Tuttle, he was a local reverend in Morristown, wrote an article about this young, brave woman who was out riding her horse.

- And is approached by a group of soldiers.

Apparently, the soldiers wanted her horse.

- The story was, she kicked the horse and ran off, and she ran to her house, and rather than hiding it in the barn, she decided to hide it in her house.

- Now, depending on who you talk to, the story goes all the way from hiding her horse in the barn to the completely implausible of hiding it in her house.

- Other iterations get really crazy.

It basically is like, a 90-year game of Telephone gone really rogue.

- [Narrator] Although experts regard the tale of the horse-in-the-house as fictional, there are important historical events with documentation that are gaining more attention, including a mutiny that took place among a contingent of Pennsylvania troops quartered at Jockey Hollow in 1781, a year after the hard winter encampment.

- It's certainly one of the most dramatic events that occurs on these grounds.

The Pennsylvania soldiers had not been paid in quite a long time.

They had not been provided with new uniforms or clothing, which was... Something that was very important to soldiers.

They may have had a little too much to drink on New Year's, they gathered in front of their huts against orders, they plundered the camp armory and magazine and stormed out of camp.

- [Narrator] An officer, Captain Adam Bettin, was killed.

A small stone memorial alongside the park's main road dates back to 1900.

To bring the story to life, a nonprofit park support group, Friends of Jockey Hollow, envisions a new trail.

Leslie Bensley is the executive director of Friends of Jockey Hollow.

- The Mutiny Trail will interpret the story of the largest mutiny of the American Revolution.

I think it allows us to tell an even fuller story of what took place here.

And it also gives us an opportunity to talk about all the different types of people who were here.

- [Narrator] Friends of Jockey Hollow support other park projects and events, including the spring encampment and the Wick Garden, where volunteers from the Herb Society share their harvest as the growing season ends each year.

- Do you have any sage?

- Oh, we've got tons of it.

- Great.

- [Narrator] Visitors can purchase vegetables, flowers, and herbs, often discovering surprises about colonial life and the family who started the garden centuries ago.

- How many people really, truly understand what it would've been like to live almost 250 years ago without any electricity, without any central heat or air conditioning, with only a fireplace in the kitchen to keep you warm?

I think the more that we can revisit that lifestyle, it makes you appreciate all that we have.

- [Narrator] Throughout Jockey Hollow, the ongoing effort to uncover more about the past also means asking new questions.

- I think what's left to learn about Jockey Hollow would be the contribution of the women, of the makeup of the army.

We tend to think of the Revolutionary soldiers as white, but we know that was not the case.

We know there were Indigenous soldiers, we know there were African American descent soldiers.

It's not something that's going to be easy because historical research is rarely easy, but I think it's worth doing.

- I think it's important because of its role in the American Revolution, but it also tells us a story about America.

- Shoulder, fire lock.

One.

Two.

Three.

- [Steven Santucci] We take for granted what those who came before us sacrificed.

And I think we need to look back on the past in that way to understand who we are today as a nation.

When you look at it from a larger perspective, there's a lot to learn about people, how they react, their humanity, their empathy, and their sympathy.

(gentle music) - [Leslie Bensley] I think the community recognizes how special this place is.

This park touches five municipalities who care very deeply about its health and its wellbeing.

- These are the jewels of America, these are the stories of America.

I think for understanding of our nation's history and the struggle that people went through to give us this great country that we live in, you can learn all about that through these parks.

And here in particular, at Jockey Hollow and Morristown National Historical Park, you can hear about the struggle, and the perseverance, and what our forefathers did during this period of time.

(melodious music) - [Narrator] Funding for this program was provided by the S. Dillard and Adrienne Kirby Family Philanthropic Fund, the F.M.

Kirby Foundation, Kim and Finn Wentworth, and Friends of Jockey Hollow.

(bright music) (bright music continues)