Saratoga National Historical Park preserves the site of the Battles of Saratoga, the first significant American military victory of the American Revolutionary War. Here in 1777, American forces met, defeated, and forced a major British army to surrender, an event which led France to recognize the independence of the United States, and enter the war as a decisive military ally of the struggling Americans. First authorized as a New York state historic preserve in 1927 on the sesquicentennial of the Battles, the Battlefield was made part of the National Park System in 1938 when Saratoga National Historical Park was authorized by the United States Congress. The Visitors Center offers a 20-minute orientation film, fiber-optic light map, timeline and artifact displays. A brochure is available for a self-guided tour of sites in the four-square mile Battlefield in Stillwater. The General Philip Schuyler House, eight miles (13 km) north in Schuylerville, is a restored house museum open by tour. The Saratoga Monument is in the nearby village of Victory. The park is located on the upper Hudson River southeast of Saratoga Springs. It contains the famous Boot Monument to Benedict Arnold, the only war memorial in the United States that does not bear the name of its honoree. The memorial was donated by John Watts de Peyster a former Major General for the New York State Militia during the American Civil War who wrote several military histories about the Battle of Saratoga.
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