West Point

The United States Military Academy at West Point, founded in 1802, is the oldest of the nation's service academies and one of the most storied military schools in the world. Set on a commanding bend of the Hudson River — a strategic fortress site during the Revolution — it has trained the officer corps of the U.S. Army for more than two centuries.

West Point was created to give the young republic a professional, trained officer class rather than relying on improvised wartime commanders. It became renowned for engineering, and its graduates built much of the nation's early infrastructure as well as commanding its armies.

Its roll of graduates reads like a history of American warfare: Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, who faced each other in the Civil War; Douglas MacArthur and Dwight Eisenhower; and generations of generals since. In the Civil War, the strange tragedy was that classmates and friends commanded opposing armies.

Beyond producing soldiers, West Point became a symbol of duty and discipline, its motto "Duty, Honor, Country" a fixture of American military culture. It remains a working academy and a national landmark on the Hudson.