When Allan Forbes and Paul F. Cadman published their France and New England in 1925, they indicated that an "effort has been made to get the State Park Commission of Connecticut to mark all the nineteen camp sites in that State and it is hoped that some time this will be done."[13] Thirty years later, the sites were still not yet marked and it was apparently only in response to the establishment of an "Interstate Rochambeau Commission" that the General Assembly took up the issue.[14]

       In its January 1957 session, the General Assembly of the State of Connecticut passed House Bill No. 2005, "An Act concerning erecting Markers to designate the Sites of Camps occupied by the French troops under Rochambeau." Approved on June 4, 1957, it appropriated $ 1,500 to cover expenses and instructed the State Highway Commissioner to "erect roadside signs" in cooperation with the Interstate Rochambeau Commission and "local historical societies or fraternal community groups."[15] Pursuant to this legislation, the State Highway Commission placed a total of 27 signs at or near known campsites of Rochambeau's army across the state.

        Fifteen years later, in 1972, Anne S. K. Brown and Howard C. Rice, Jr., published the authoritative and groundbreaking study The American Campaigns of Rochambeau's Army, 1780, 1781, 1782, 1783.[16] Volume 2 of the work contains 204 pages of itineraries and texts followed by 177 contemporary maps, charts, and views of the routes taken by Rochambeau's army on the American mainland as well as in the Caribbean. These maps identified and definitely established the route of the French forces from Newport to Yorktown in 1781 and back again to Boston in 1782.

         During preparations for the bicentennial of the American Revolution, United States Representative Fish of Maryland introduced on April 16, 1975, House of Representatives Concurrent Resolution 225. It called upon federal, state, county, and local governments to recognize the route taken by Rochambeau's forces as identified in the Brown and Rice work as "The Washington-Rochambeau National Historic Route." On November 14, 1975, the United States Department of the Interior as the supervisory body of the National Park Service informed Representative James A. Haley, Chair of the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs of the House of Representatives, that the department had no objections to the resolution but recommended that the word "National" be removed from the route's designation since the route was neither part of the National Park System nor did it meet the criteria of integrity required for inclusion in the National Park System.

        The Sub-Committee on National Parks and Recreation held hearings on the resolution and the correspondence from the Dept. of the Interior dated November 17, 1975, and sent a favorable report to Haley, whose committee took up the resolution on January 27, 1976. In its report to the full House, Haley's committee recommended passage of the resolution creating the "Washington-Rochambeau Historic Route." On February 17, 1776, the resolution declaring the recognition of the route "as one of the more useful and enduring educational patriotic accomplishments to come from the bicentennial of the American War for Independence" passed without objection as amended and was referred to the United States Senate the following day.

        More than five months later, on July 21, 1976, the Department of the Interior informed Senator Henry M. Jackson, chair of the Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, that it had no objection to House Concurrent Resolution 225. Following a hearing by the Senate's Subcommittee on Parks and Recreation on August 2, 1976, Jackson's committee recommended on August 5, that the Senate pass the resolution as well.[17] The resolution was passed by the Senate on August 25, 1976.

         Sometime prior to the House of Representatives vote on February 17, 1976, State Representative Colucci of the 71st District introduced Connecticut House Joint Resolution No. 66, in which he asked that it be "RESOLVED, that the Historic Routes, through the State of Connecticut, namely in the towns of Sterling … and Ridgefield, be recognized as the 'Washington-Rochambeau National Historic Route'." The resolution never seems to have been referred to committee or voted on. Joint House-Senate Resolution 225 had asked that the states "through appropriate signing, call attention to the route," but failed to appropriate funds to pay for signs outside Colonial National Historical Park in Yorktown, Virginia. Despite the lack of federal funds, a "Washington-Rochambeau National Historic Route Committee" was established in Yorktown, New York, which began setting up markers. From October 9-16, 1981, hundreds of re-enactors traced the route from Newport to Yorktown to commemorate the bicentennial of the siege.[18]

        Another twenty years passed until the Inter Community Historic Resources Committee began its work of identifying and classifying known campsites according to their state of preservation and the danger of potentially destructive development. The Committee set itself the goal in October 1995 of having Rochambeau's route, already recognized as the "Washington-Rochambeau Historic Route" by the United States Congress, listed in the National Register of Historic Places as the "Revolutionary Road." Concurrently it asked State Representative Pamela Z. Sawyer to introduce legislation in the General Assembly to allocate the funds for the historical, archeological, and archi-tectural research required for that registration. After three years, and with the help of 26 co-signers, the state legislature in the spring of 1998 appropriated $ 30,000 for the first of three annual phases to document the route through Connecticut as the first step toward having the entire route from Newport to Yorktown listed in the National Register.

13Allan Forbes and Paul F. Cadman, France and New England 3 vols., (Boston, 1925) Vol. 1, p. 131.
14I have been unable to verify if the State Park Commission ever took up the issue just as I have been unable to locate any supporting information on the "Interstate Rochambeau Commission" of 1956/57. The commission may have been created for the 175th anniversary of the battle of Yorktown.
15The legislative history of this bill can be followed via Stenographer's Notes of Public Hearings before the Joint Standing Committee on Roads and Bridges (1957), p. 165, (February 26, 1957); Connecticut General Assembly, House, Proceedings 1957 Vol. 7, Part 3, p. 1436, (April 23, 1957), Part 5, pp. 2819/20, (May 27, 1957); Connecticut General Assembly, Senate, Proceedings 1957 (May 28, 1957), p. 3557, and Secretary of State, Special Acts passed by the General Assembly of the State of Connecticut at the January Session, 1957 (Hartford, 1957), No. 552, (June 4, 1957).
16 2 vols., (Princeton and Providence, 1972).

17See United States. Congress. House. Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs. 94th Congress, 2nd Session, Report No. 94-799, Recognizing the Washington-Rochambeau National Historic Route, and United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, 94th Congress, 2nd Session, Report No. 94-1145, The Washington-Rochambeau Historic Route (Washington, DC, 1976).
18See The Herald Friday, August 28, 1981. There also seems to have been some support in France for such a project: see the attached page from the Revue economique français Vol. 104, No. 2, (1982).

[13] "Allan Forbes and Paul F. Cadman, France and New England 3 vols., (Boston, 1925) Vol. 1, p. 131.
[14]I have been unable to verify if the State Park Commission ever took up the issue just as I have been unable to locate any supporting information on the "Interstate Rochambeau Commission" of 1956/57. The commission may have been created for the 175th anniversary of the battle of Yorktown.
[15]The legislative history of this bill can be followed via Stenographer's Notes of Public Hearings before the Joint Standing Committee on Roads and Bridges (1957), p. 165, (February 26, 1957); Connecticut General Assembly, House, Proceedings 1957 Vol. 7, Part 3, p. 1436, (April 23, 1957), Part 5, pp. 2819/20, (May 27, 1957); Connecticut General Assembly, Senate, Proceedings 1957 (May 28, 1957), p. 3557, and Secretary of State, Special Acts passed by the General Assembly of the State of Connecticut at the January Session, 1957 (Hartford, 1957), No. 552, (June 4, 1957).
[16]2 vols., (Princeton and Providence, 1972).
[17]See United States. Congress. House. Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs. 94th Congress, 2nd Session, Report No. 94-799, Recognizing the Washington-Rochambeau National Historic Route, and United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, 94th Congress, 2nd Session, Report No. 94-1145, The Washington-Rochambeau Historic Route (Washington, DC, 1976).
[18]See The Herald Friday, August 28, 1981. There also seems to have been some support in France for such a project: see the attached page from the Revue economique français Vol. 104, No. 2, (1982).