28th Division Shrine
Harris Township, Centre County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Dedicated to heroic dead of Pennsylvania's famed 28th in two world wars. The Division was created Sept., 1917. The Shrine was founded by Col. Theodore Boal and made a State memorial in 1932.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Pennsylvania's 28th Infantry Division traces its lineage to 1917, and it went on to earn a fierce reputation in the trenches of the First World War and again in the hedgerows and forests of the Second. Colonel Theodore Boal founded this hillside shrine to honor the division's fallen, and Pennsylvania made it an official state memorial in 1932. The site gathers the memory of two generations of Keystone State soldiers into one place of reflection.
Why it matters
The 28th Division embodies how state National Guard units carried ordinary American communities into the century's largest wars, and this shrine is among the earliest public efforts to give that shared sacrifice a permanent home.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When this shrine was founded, the memory of the First World War was still fresh and raw across Pennsylvania. Towns had sent their sons overseas in numbers that had never been asked of them before, and many of those young men did not come home. The nation was learning how to mourn on an industrial scale.
The division honored here was born in that moment, organized in September 1917 as the United States mobilized for a war already three years old in Europe. It drew heavily on Pennsylvania's National Guard — citizen-soldiers from farms, mills, and small towns across the Keystone State.
This quiet hillside in Centre County became a place to hold that grief and pride together. By the time the memorial gained official state recognition, the country was between the wars, unaware that the same division would soon be called to an even larger conflict.
People & events
The shrine was the creation of Colonel Theodore Boal, a man of means from this part of Pennsylvania who raised and led men in the war and wanted their sacrifice remembered close to home. He built the memorial on his own ground, and in 1932 the commonwealth made it an official state memorial, binding a private act of remembrance to public duty.
The division it honors earned a fierce reputation. In the First World War its Pennsylvanians fought in the grinding campaigns that finally broke the German lines. A generation later, the same division — carrying its distinctive keystone insignia — waded ashore in the fighting for France and battled through some of the hardest close-quarters combat of the Second World War, in hedgerows, forests, and winter woods.
The marker deliberately gathers both wars into one place. Boal's generation of soldiers and their sons' generation are remembered side by side, two waves of Keystone State men answering two of the century's great calls to arms.
Its place in the American story
The story told on this hillside is really the story of the National Guard in modern America. These were not distant professional armies but units rooted in specific communities — the men who marched away were neighbors, and when they fell, whole towns felt it.
That local rootedness is exactly what made such divisions powerful and their losses so personal. The twentieth century's largest wars were fought, in large part, by ordinary Americans organized state by state, and Pennsylvania's contribution ran through nearly every major campaign.
As one of the earliest efforts to give that shared sacrifice a permanent, dignified home, the shrine also marks a shift in how Americans chose to remember their wars — not only with grand national monuments, but with local places of reflection where a community could come to grieve its own.
If you visit
This is a memorial, not a museum, so come in the right frame of mind — quiet, unhurried, ready to reflect rather than to be entertained. The setting on the hillside is part of the point, chosen for contemplation.
Look for the keystone — Pennsylvania's emblem and the division's own insignia — and let it remind you that the names being honored belonged to specific Pennsylvania towns and families. Reading the dedication with that in mind turns an abstract memorial into something intimate.
The surrounding area of Centre County is rich in early American and military memory, and this stop pairs naturally with the region's other historic sites. Give yourself a few minutes here between destinations; it's the kind of place that rewards a slow pause on a longer road trip.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Theodore Boal
Themes & tags
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