Cresap's Fort
Lower Windsor Township, York County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Thomas Cresap settled here about 1730 on lands claimed by Lord Baltimore of Maryland. Forcibly evicted in 1736 by Penn agents who burned his "fort," Cresap moved to Western Maryland, where he continued active in frontier affairs and died about 1790.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
About 1730 the frontiersman Thomas Cresap settled along the Susquehanna on land that Maryland's Lord Baltimore claimed against Pennsylvania, making his fortified home a flashpoint in the bitter boundary dispute between the two colonies. In 1736 Penn's agents forcibly evicted him and burned his "fort," and Cresap moved west into Maryland, where he remained a restless figure in frontier affairs until his death around 1790. His stand gave the border quarrel one of its most colorful episodes.
Why it matters
The clash over Cresap's fort dramatizes the messy, sometimes violent work of drawing colonial boundaries — disputes eventually settled by the surveying of the Mason-Dixon Line.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Captain Thomas Cresap (1703-1790) - PLAQUE
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