Top 10 Worst Historical Sites in the United States

These are my"Top Ten Silliest Historical Sites." Be warned, however, I use the word"silliest" in a very reserved sense. On one hand, these sites are indeed silly -- they distort and mangle the historical truth. On the other hand, however, they are also harmful and dangerous to those who accept their teachings as fact and truth. You have been warned.

#10 A Three-Month War Gets Five Years

In Dover, New Hampshire, and across the United States, stand more than 50 statues of"The Hiker." He represents the Spanish-American War much as"the doughboy" represents World War I. Almost every monument also includes a Maltese Cross in a circle, the symbol of the war. But why do these monuments say"Spanish-American War Veterans, 1898-1902," when the Spanish-American War lasted only about three months? The answer is, because these monuments are not really about the Spanish-American War, at least not primarily. They commemorate our war against the Philippines, which began in 1899, when we attacked our ally the Filipinos in the suburbs of Manilla. Teddy Roosevelt declared that war over on July 4, 1902, although army historians note that guerilla warfare dragged on for several more years. The Dover hiker even claims we fought"to succor the weak and oppressed against foreign tyranny and to give Cuba and the Philippines a place among the free peoples of the earth." Actually, the Spanish-American War did begin with some anti-imperialist sentiment, but in the Philippine-American War we were the"foreign tyranny." That's why our monuments to it bear the name of a much nicer war.

#9 Those Stupid Indians! -- Selling Manhattan for $24 Worth of Beads!

At the bottom of Manhattan, there's a statue that shows a Dutchman buying the island for $24 worth of beads in 1626. The truth is nothing so sweet. The Dutch gave perhaps $2400 worth of trade goods -- metal kettles, steel axes and knives, guns, and brightly colored wool blankets -- to the Canarsies, who lived in Brooklyn and had no claim to Manhattan. The Weckquaesgeeks, who did live on Manhattan, were not amused. Then in the 1640s, with help from the Canarsies, the Dutch exterminated most of the Weckquaesgeeks. Ever since, the $24 myth has made Indians look silly, because telling what really happened might make the Dutch look immoral.

#8 George Washington Prays for God's Help at Valley Forge

The largest building on the tour of Valley Forge National Park is the Washington Memorial Chapel, begun in 1903. Its dominant characteristic is its two matched sets of dazzling stained glass windows, one depicting the life of Jesus Christ, the other the life of George Washington."Washington in prayer at Valley Forge is seen in the central opening over the door," explains the handout given to visitors. Next to a bush, the general kneels in prayer to Almighty God, seeking God's assistance when it seemed only He could rescue our troops, starving and freezing at Valley Forge. The prayer story derived from none other than Parson Weems, promulgator also of the cherry tree myth. Actually, Washington never prayed for God's aid, and for that matter, the troops were never starving or freezing at Valley Forge. In addition to the chapel, Washington also kneels in prayer in bronze at the nearby Freedoms Foundation, in a painting in the Valley Forge Historical Society Museum, and on stamps issued by the United States Postal Service for the 150th and 200th anniversary of the 1778 non-event.

#7 The Jefferson Memorial Misquotes Thomas Jefferson

The Jefferson Memorial, dedicated in Washington, D.C., in 1943, makes six errors in its quotation of the Declaration of Independence! Worse is what it does to Jefferson's words on its third panel, described by the National Park Service as"devoted to his ideas on freedom of the body and to his beliefs in the necessity of educating the masses of the people." This panel juxtaposes fragments from widely scattered writings of Thomas Jefferson to create the impression that he was very nearly an abolitionist. In their original contexts, the same quotations reveal a Jefferson conflicted about slavery -- at times its harsh critic, often its apologist.

#6 Hodgenville, Kentucky: Abraham Lincoln's Birthplace Cabin - Built Thirty Years After His Death!

Long ago, a lad at the University of Wisconsin answered a class assignment with the now famous blooper,"Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands." The reality is even sillier: Abraham Lincoln had been dead for thirty years when his birthplace cabin was built! This cabin then journeyed to a world's fair, to Coney Island, and even got commingled with logs purporting to be the birthplace cabin of Jefferson Davis! Nevertheless the National Park Service solemnly tells tourists not to use flash photography, lest they somehow damage the historic logs!

#5 Muscatine, Iowa, Honors Red Men Who Can't Join

If we go straight up the Mississippi River to Iowa, eventually we will reach this statue in Muscatine's Riverside Park. A half-clad male Native American gazes toward the Mississippi. It says"Presented to the city by the Muscuitine Tribe #95, Improved Order of Red Men" and"dedicated to the Mascoutin Indians in 1926." Not only did Native Americans have nothing to do with the statue, but for more than half a century after its dedication they were not allowed to join the society set up to honor them! When the statue went up, there were two Red Men for every Native American, and it looked like American Indians were a vanishing race. Today the Red Men are down to just 28,000, while Native Americans total more than two million. Now, however, Native Americans can join the Red Men, although the organization does not know if any have ever done so.

#4 Confederate Dead Are Everywhere

Heading east from Texas, we reach Cleveland, Mississippi, a hundred miles below Memphis. A typical Confederate monument dominates the lawn of the courthouse, the usual bronze sentry on a pedestal, on whose base are the words:"Bolivar Troop Chapter U.D.C. / C.S.A. / To the memory of our Confederate dead / 1861-65." But Cleveland never had any Confederate dead, because Cleveland did not exist during the Civil War or for some decades afterwards. All across America, from Helena, Montana (!), to Rockville, Maryland, stand"loving tributes to our Confederate soldiers." As a result, states that were predominantly Unionist now look Confederate. Kentucky, for example, did not secede. In all, some 90,000 Kentuckians fought for the United States as against 35,000 for the Confederate States. Nevertheless, today the state boasts 72 Confederate monuments and only two Union ones!

#3 Pittsburg, Texas, Where Flight Began

All ye who learned that the Wright brothers invented the airplane and first flew at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, hark! The State of Texas tells quite a different story. In downtown Pittsburg an official Texas marker announces:

The Ezekiel Airship
Baptist minister and inventor Burrell Cannon (1848-1922) led some Pittsburg investors to establish the Ezekiel Airship Company and build a craft described in the Biblical book of Ezekiel. The ship had large fabric-covered wings powered by an engine that turned four sets of paddles.

The marker goes on to tell that the plane"was briefly airborne at this site late in 1902, a year before the Wright brothers first flew." It does not tell what is plainly visible in this drawing, part of the official logo of Pittsburg: the"four sets of paddles" rotated vertically! Such paddlewheels work fine on a river, where a clear demarkation exists between water and not-water. In an airship, after a paddle moves down, generating lift, and backward, generating forward movement, it unfortunately moves up, negating any lift, and forward, nullifying any forward motion. The Ezekiel Airship never got off the ground, despite the claims of the Texas Historical Commission. Rev. Cannon eventually conceded as much, concluding,"God never willed that this airship should fly."

#2 A"Most Horrible Indian Massacre" in Almo, Idaho

Almo, Idaho, boasts the most deceitful historical marker in the United States, commemorating a"most horrible Indian massacre, 1861." It is also perhaps the most beautiful, carved into the shape of the state of Idaho. Only trouble is, the massacre never happened. Thus this marker teaches us that every historic site is a tale of two eras -- what it is about and when it went up. And this marker tells us something about 1938, when it went up, but nothing whatever about 1861, when nothing happened in Almo, so far as we can tell.

#1 Columbus Discovers Sacramento

A huge statue of Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella of Spain dominates the ground floor rotunda of the California Statehouse. As far as we know, Columbus never got to Sacramento. Even sillier, he holds up a sphere to persuade the Queen of the roundness of the earth. Actually, novelist Washington Irving, who invented Rip Van Winkle, popularized the flat-earth fable in 1828 in his best-selling biography of Columbus. Writers of American histories soon picked up the story, and since textbooks tend to be clones of each other, Irving's little hoax persists in some books to this day.