Return
to the "POINTER VIEW"July 26, 2002
Return
to the "POINTER VIEW"
July
26, 2002
Story and photo by Irene Brown
Editor
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| Links from the Great Chain at Trophy Point. |
The U.S. Military Academy is located just 50 miles north of New York City. Its beautiful scenery and historic grounds make it a popular tourist attraction. In fact, millions of tourists visit West Point each year.
Something that attracts tourists and historians alike is the abundance of monuments. The academy grounds are covered with great tributes to soldiers, graduates and the institution itself.
One of the most prominent of the academy’s tributes is Battle Monument. This statue is dedicated to Army officers and men of the U.S. Army who fell in battle during the Civil War.
Designed by an engineering firm that included the nation’s foremost designer of the 19th century, Stanford White, the monument consists of a granite shaft with 2,230 inscribed names and an angelic-like figure at the top called "Victory." The shaft is reported to be the largest polished granite shaft in the Western Hemisphere.
Another popular attraction is the Great Chain. The links of this chain stretched across the Hudson River at West Point during the Revolutionary War and served as a key element in the area defenses.
Other monuments and statues include cannons and memorials at Trophy Point, statues of Patton, Washington, Sedgwick, Thayer, MacArthur and Kosciuszko. There’s a monument to Eisenhower and several more tributes to soldiers, including the American Soldiers Statue and the Flight Memorial. The guide map of West Point, included in the post guide and directory, contains directional information for most points of interest.
Don't
forget the Visitors Center
and West Point Museum at Pershing Center
