Taylorsville and McConkey's Ferry are two agricultural villages that sheltered Revolutionary troops after the New York campaign in the autumn of 1776. That defeat forced George Washington's troops to withdraw into Pennsylvania. Washington's subsequent lightning strike that captured the Hessian troops barracked in Trenton on Christmas Day 1776 is celebrated here with a reenactment each year. In 1917, that first important victory of the Revolutionary War was the agent for the preservation of a section of the Delaware River shoreline between Taylorsville and McConkey's Ferry at the south and Aquetong Road to New Hope on the north. Fortunately, the creation of the park by the commonwealth preserved buildings and their settings that provide good examples of the preindustrial landscape, with houses, mills, and shops unified by the russets and tans of local stone and shingle that recall their English heritage.