The Hut City at Valley Forge

The Continental Army reached Valley Forge on December 19, 1777, eighteen miles from Philadelphia. Some 12,000 men had to be housed before the ground froze. Washington's orders set the pattern: log huts fourteen feet by sixteen, twelve men to a hut, and a twelve-dollar prize to the first squad in each regiment to finish theirs.

Within weeks a city of more than a thousand huts stood on the hillsides in rows. It was not the cold that did the damage — the winter was mild by Pennsylvania standards. It was supply. Meat, flour and shoes ran out. Typhus, dysentery and influenza went through the huts, and around two thousand soldiers died there.

The army that marched out in June 1778 was smaller, drilled, and had not dissolved. The huts were left standing behind it.

Two-thirds of the picture is sky — a low winter sun barely pushing through haze, the kind of light that gives no warmth. Below it the huts run back in rows until they blur into the horizon, each with its thread of chimney smoke going straight up in the still air.

The foreground is where the life is: two men hauling firewood, a sentry in a blanket, a few soldiers crouched at a small fire. Nobody is doing anything heroic. They are trying to stay warm.