West Point's Trophy Point displays cannon captured or surrendered in American conflicts over more than two hundred years, beginning with guns taken in 1777 during the Battles of Saratoga. By the end of the American Revolution, West Point maintained more than 160 cannon for the fledgling United States Army, and even before the founding of the United States Military Academy in 1802, it had also assumed the role of educating officers in engineering and gunnery, with these captured ordnance pieces serving as instructional material 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 academy played important roles in Army operations, and many cannon from that conflict came here. The American Civil War added nearly fifty captured Confederate pieces, and after that war efforts began to memorialize fallen soldiers of the United States Regular Army; in 1897, General John M. Schofield dedicated Battle Monument, the site's most prominent memorial. The cannon and trophies are arranged by wars, including areas for the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Spanish American War, the American Civil War, and the Mexican War, 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. Together these collections reflect the first century of West Point's contributions to the shaping of the nation.

Photo: Bill Coughlin

Photo: Bill Coughlin

Photo: Bill Coughlin

Photo: Bill Coughlin

Photo: Bill Coughlin

Photo: Bill Coughlin

Photo: Bill Coughlin

Photo: Bill Coughlin

Photo: Bill Coughlin