United States Military Academy

West Point occupies a bend of the Hudson so strategically vital that George Washington called it 'the key to America' and fortified it against the British during the Revolution. Since 1802 the same commanding bluff has been home to the United States Military Academy, the nation's oldest service academy, whose graduates have led American armies in every war since and whose Gothic granite campus is itself a monument to two centuries of military history and tradition.

Recognizing the site's command of a sharp bend in the Hudson River, the Continental Army fortified West Point in 1778, stretching a massive iron chain across the river to block British ships. Benedict Arnold, commanding the fort in 1780, infamously conspired to surrender it to the British before his plot was discovered, forever linking his name to treason in American memory.

President Thomas Jefferson signed legislation establishing the United States Military Academy at West Point on March 16, 1802, creating the nation's first federal engineering school as well as its first military academy. Superintendent Sylvanus Thayer, who took charge in 1817 and is remembered as the 'Father of the Military Academy,' built its rigorous academic and engineering curriculum, producing officers who built much of the young nation's infrastructure alongside its army.

West Point graduates have included Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, Dwight Eisenhower, and Douglas MacArthur, and its officers have commanded on both sides of the Civil War and every American conflict since. The campus's granite Gothic Revival buildings, largely built in the early 20th century, and the Cadet Chapel overlooking the Hudson give it one of the most recognizable collegiate landscapes in the country. It remains an active, highly selective four-year federal service academy.