Welcome To Trophy Point

At Trophy Point at West Point, cannon captured or surrendered in American conflicts over more than two hundred years reflect the site’s military and educational history. The first trophies brought to West Point were guns captured in 1777 during the Battles of Saratoga, and by the end of the American Revolution West Point maintained over 160 cannon for the fledgling United States Army. Even before the United States Military Academy was founded in 1802, West Point had also taken on the role of educating officers in engineering and gunnery, and these captured ordnance pieces became a source of instruction for the Corps of Cadets. In 1837, the Military Academy Board of Visitors formally recommended West Point as the site for all U.S. Army war trophies. During the Mexican War, graduates of the United States Military Academy played critical roles in army operations, and many cannon from that conflict were exhibited here. The American Civil War added nearly fifty captured Confederate pieces, as hundreds of academy graduates became generals for the North and South. After the war, efforts began to memorialize fallen soldiers of the United States Regular Army, and in 1897 General John M. Schofield formally dedicated Battle Monument, the site’s most prominent memorial. The cannon and trophies were arranged by wars, with Revolutionary War pieces at the east end overlooking the Hudson River, War of 1812 cannon to the west, Spanish-American War trophies from Cuba and the Philippines to the south, Confederate trophies flanking the walkways beside Battle Monument, and Mexican War trophies near the flagpole. These objects mark the first century of West Point’s contributions to shaping the nation, while trophies from World War I, World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, and more recent conflicts are displayed in the West Point Museum at Pershing Center, and all cannon at Trophy Point belong to that museum’s collections.

West Point, New York · United States