page_title: Noble train of artillery
section_title: Sources
hierarchical_section_title: Noble train of artillery / Sources
caption_attribution_description: English: This is an excerpt of a 1779 map by Claude Sauthier of New York. It has been modified to show the Henry Knox Trail, with an inset showing the map's location relative to the modern United States.
context_page_description: The noble train of artillery, also known as the Knox Expedition, was an expedition led by Continental Army Colonel Henry Knox to transport heavy weaponry that had been captured at Fort Ticonderoga to the Continental Army camps outside Boston, Massachusetts during the winter of 1775–1776.
  Knox went to Ticonderoga in November 1775 and moved 60 tons of cannon and other armaments over the course of three winter months by boat, horse, ox-drawn sledges, and manpower along poor-quality roads, across two semi-frozen rivers, and through the forests and swamps of the lightly inhabited Berkshires to the Boston area, covering approximately 300 miles. Historian Victor Brooks has called Knox's exploit "one of the most stupendous feats of logistics" of the entire American Revolutionary War. The route which he followed is now known as the Henry Knox Trail, and the states of New York and Massachusetts have erected markers along the way.
context_section_description: Knox's letters and diaries provide the primary sources for much of the daily activity in this journey. His description is detailed for some of the events and dates, but there are also significant gaps, and significant portions of the journey are poorly documented, especially much of the Massachusetts section.  Some of these gaps occur because Knox did not write about them, and others because pages are missing from the diary. Other sources confirm some of Knox's details or report additional details, but parts of the route are not known with certainty, and modern descriptions of those parts are based on what is known about Massachusetts roads at the time, including the placement of markers for the Henry Knox Trail. Regardless, the route was more or less in the corridor of today's Massachusetts Turnpike (Interstate 90).
caption: The apparent route of the expedition, overlaid on a 1779 map
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