Pluckemin: America's First Military Academy

The village of Pluckemin, tucked into the Somerset Hills, holds a distinction most people drive past without knowing. In the winter of seventeen seventy-eight to seventy-nine, General Henry Knox chose this hillside as the winter cantonment for the Continental Army's artillery corps. Knox built barracks, storehouses, workshops, and a classroom where he trained officers in mathematics, engineering, and gunnery, an effort some call America's first military academy, more than two decades before West Point opened.

The Jacobus Vanderveer farmhouse served as Knox's headquarters from December seventh, seventeen seventy-eight through June of seventy-nine. Archaeologists later uncovered the foundations of those original buildings beneath the fields. The village's Georgian and Greek Revival streetscape along Route Two-Oh-Six is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.