News Release

Saratoga National Historical Park Acquires Saratoga Surrender Site

The surrender site at Saratoga

NPS Photo

News Release Date: March 22, 2021

Contact: Chris Martin, 518-670-2950

STILLWATER, NY: Saratoga National Historical Park has accepted donation of visitor amenities at the Saratoga Surrender Site from the Friends of Saratoga Battlefield and acquired an easement over the roughly nineteen-acre site from its owner, the Open Space Institute Land Trust, Inc. The site is located a half mile south of Schuylerville, NY on U.S. Route 4 and is open to visitors from dawn to dusk throughout the year.

“The Saratoga Surrender Site is a truly tremendous addition to the park,” said Acting Superintendent Chris Beagan. “Fifteen years in the making, this acquisition demonstrates both extraordinary generosity and cooperation by many partners.”

The Saratoga Surrender Site marks the location of the first instance in world history that the British Army capitulated. It is where British General John Burgoyne surrendered his army to American General Horatio Gates on October 17, 1777. This prompted French recognition of United States’ independence, an alliance between the two nations, and an international war between Britain and France. Worldwide warfare expanded further still between Britain and Spain (1779), Britain and the Netherlands (1780), and Britain and Mysore (1780). Needing to extricate itself from fighting five wars simultaneously, Britain sued for peace and recognized United States’ independence in 1783.

Today, the focal point of the Saratoga Surrender Site is an observation plaza developed by the Friends of Saratoga Battlefield. The plaza overlooks the Hudson River and a landscape relatively unchanged since the Revolutionary War. A granite wall faces the river with a bronze bas-relief that depicts painter John Trumbull’s 1821 masterpiece, “Surrender of General Burgoyne.” The original painting hangs in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C.

The State of New York supported acquisition of the site by the Open Space Institute in 2006. The Town of Saratoga and the New York State Natural Heritage Trust received a grant from the American Battlefield Protection Program to prepare a public access plan for the site, completed in 2012. The Friends of Saratoga Battlefield led development of visitor amenities at the site in collaboration with the Historic Hudson-Hoosic Rivers Partnership. The visitor amenities were dedicated on October 17, 2019.
 

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