Where America Was Won
Travel
Audio By Carbonatix
By Kevin McCullough
Where America Was Won
You’ve seen Hamilton.
You’ve heard the songs. You know the characters. You may even be among those people capable of performing the entire musical from memory while your family quietly considers abandoning you at a rest stop.
But on October 17, you can do something considerably better.
Go stand where Hamilton actually fought.
Yorktown, Virginia, is preparing for a remarkable America 250 weekend that brings together battlefield history, live interpretation, artillery, food, music—and, after sunset, Hamilton projected onto a giant screen beneath the Yorktown Victory Monument.
Not Broadway.
The battlefield.
And suddenly, an America 250 road trip practically plans itself.
Walk the Battlefield First
Before the musical, you need the story.
In the fall of 1781, American and French forces surrounded British General Charles Cornwallis at Yorktown.
George Washington was here.
The Marquis de Lafayette was here.
And a 26-year-old Alexander Hamilton was here.
On the night of October 14, Hamilton led American troops in a bayonet assault against Redoubt No. 10, while French troops attacked nearby Redoubt No. 9.
The positions fell.
Five days later, Cornwallis’ army surrendered.
The Revolutionary War wouldn’t formally end until the Treaty of Paris in 1783, but the fighting at Yorktown effectively destroyed Britain’s ability to continue the war in America.
So walk it.
Stand where the siege lines ran. Find the redoubts. Visit Surrender Field.
History behaves differently when you’re standing on the ground where it happened.
Then Let Yorktown Celebrate
This year marks the 245th anniversary of the Victory at Yorktown, and October 16–19 becomes Victory Weekend.
Saturday’s Victory Market at Riverwalk Landing brings local makers, food, and French-inspired treats to the waterfront. Nearby, the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown will stage artillery firings and interpretive programs exploring the siege. The VA250 Mobile Museum will also be at the battlefield visitor center throughout the weekend.
Then comes Saturday night.
Bring a blanket.
Bring a lawn chair.
And walk to the Yorktown Victory Monument.
At 6:30 p.m., historical interpreter Luke Nathan Phillips appears as Alexander Hamilton for a conversation about Hamilton’s experience during the Siege of Yorktown.
At 7:00?
The movie begins.
The National Park Service is screening the filmed stage production of Hamilton outdoors at the monument.
Admission is free, although advance registration is required.
There’s something wonderfully strange about that.
A musical written more than two centuries later returns to the place where one of its principal characters actually charged into battle.
History meets the story we now tell about history.
Make It a Weekend
Don’t leave Sunday morning.
Explore Historic Yorktown. Walk the waterfront. Visit the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown, where the VA250 signature exhibition Give Me Liberty: Virginia & the Forging of a Nation is running through January 2027.
And if you’ve got another day, Williamsburg is less than half an hour away.
That’s the beauty of this particular America 250 trip.
It isn’t history trapped behind glass.
You can walk it.
You can hear artillery.
You can stand at the redoubts.
You can look across the same landscape Washington, Lafayette, and Hamilton saw.
And then, after dark, you can sit beneath the monument and hear someone sing about it.
America has spent 250 years telling its story.
Sometimes the best way to hear it is to go back to where it happened.
