Forbes Road, 1758, Fort Bedford to Fort Duquesne- Stony Creek Encampment (PLAQUE)
Quemahoning Township, Somerset County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
"The Ovens" supply headquarters fortifications were erected a few rods north of this site. The Forbes Road leads northward to the encampment at the foot of Laurel Hill. 23.5 miles from Fort Bedford.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
On the 1758 Forbes Road, the Stony Creek Encampment served as a fortified supply headquarters — its "Ovens" baking bread for the army — during the French and Indian War campaign against Fort Duquesne. Fortifications rose just north of this site as General John Forbes staged men and provisions for the mountainous advance. The marker records its distance along the road from Fort Bedford.
Why it matters
Supply depots like Stony Creek made a slow, deliberate wilderness offensive possible, and that campaign helped secure the Ohio Valley for Britain on the eve of American nationhood.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the summer of 1758, the long war between Britain and France for control of North America had reached the mountains of what is now western Pennsylvania. The two empires were fighting over the interior of the continent — above all the forks of the Ohio, where the French held a fort and the British wanted one. Between the settled Pennsylvania frontier and that prize lay a wilderness of steep ridges and dense forest, crossed by no proper road.
This spot in the Somerset County highlands sat squarely in that gap. It lay along the new military road being cut westward from Fort Bedford, near the foot of Laurel Hill — one of the long, forested ridges that rise like walls across the region. To a soldier of the period, this was the edge of the known world, cold and damp even in summer, and a very long way from anywhere that grew wheat or baked bread.
The answer to that problem was logistics, and logistics is what this place was for. An army moving through mountains cannot carry everything it needs on its back; it survives on a chain of supply posts, each one stocked and fortified, each one a link forward. The encampment here was one of those links — a staging point where men and provisions gathered before the hard climb ahead.
People & events
The road and the campaign behind it belonged to General John Forbes, the British commander charged in 1758 with taking the French position at the forks of the Ohio. Forbes was a deliberate soldier, and his strategy was as much about engineering as about fighting: rather than dash across the mountains, he would build a fortified road westward from Fort Bedford, planting a strong post at each stage so that his army could never be cut off from its food and ammunition.
This encampment was one of those staged posts. Its fortified supply headquarters — remembered by the homely name 'The Ovens' — stood a short distance north of the marker's site. The name tells you exactly what happened here: ovens meant bread, and bread meant an army that could keep marching. Flour hauled up from the settlements was baked into the rations that carried soldiers over the next ridge.
From here the road ran on toward the encampment at the foot of Laurel Hill, deeper into the mountains. The marker even records the distance back to Fort Bedford — a reminder that every mile of this route was measured, guarded, and hard-won. There was no single dramatic battle at this spot; its work was quieter and, in its way, just as decisive.
Its place in the American story
It is easy to remember wars by their battles and forget that campaigns are won or lost by supply. Forbes's slow, methodical advance in 1758 is a classic case. By securing his road one fortified depot at a time — places like this one — he made it possible to move a large force through country that had swallowed earlier expeditions. The bread baked at posts like 'The Ovens' was, in a real sense, part of the ammunition.
The campaign that this depot fed helped bring the forks of the Ohio under British control, a turning point in the struggle for the continent. That contest shaped whose language, law, and settlement would spread across the Ohio Valley in the decades that followed — the same country that a young United States would inherit within a generation.
So a modest supply camp in the Somerset highlands belongs to a very large story. The outcome of the wider war rearranged the map of North America, and it rested in part on unglamorous work done at places exactly like this.
If you visit
Come here expecting a landscape rather than a monument. This is high, rolling country near the foot of Laurel Hill, and the thing to feel is the terrain itself: the long ridges an eighteenth-century army had to climb, ridge after ridge, on foot and with wagons. Stand for a moment and imagine hauling barrels of flour up that grade.
Read the marker as a piece of a route, not a single site. It names the fortified supply post that once stood a little to the north and points the old road onward toward the next encampment. If you trace that direction on a map, you begin to see the chain of posts as the campaign's builders did — a lifeline strung across the mountains.
This makes a rewarding stop on a drive through Pennsylvania's ridge-and-valley country, especially if you link it with other markers along the historic road. Bring curiosity and a good map; the reward here is understanding, not spectacle — the quiet realization that history sometimes turns on where the bread was baked.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · John Forbes
Related events
- · Forbes Expedition of 1758
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Forbes Road - Stony Creek Encampment
Quemahoning Township, PA · est. 1951
During the French and Indian War, British General John Forbes cut a military road across Pennsylvania toward Fort Duquesne, and along it his army built fortified supply depots to feed the advance. The Stony Creek encampment stood just north of here, a stockaded storehouse on the route that then climbed toward Laurel Hill and the site of Tomahawk Camp. These depots kept Forbes's 1758 campaign supplied through the rugged Alleghenies.
Forbes Road - Edmunds Swamp
Shade Township, PA · est. 1952
In 1758, during the French and Indian War, General John Forbes cut a new military road west toward the French stronghold at Fort Duquesne. This spot along the old Raystown Path — named for Indian trader Edmund Cartlidge — offered good grass to feed the army's horses, a vital consideration for a force hauling supplies through the Alleghenies. A nearby redoubt guarded the encampment.
Forbes Road, 1758, Fort Bedford to Fort Duquesne - Edmond's Swamp (PLAQUE)
Shade Township, PA · est. 1930
During the French and Indian War in 1758, British General John Forbes cut a road westward across the Pennsylvania mountains to strike the French at Fort Duquesne. This marker records the chain of encampments and supply forts strung along that route, positioning Edmond's Swamp relative to Stony Creek and Fort Bedford. The Forbes Road became a lifeline for one of the war's decisive campaigns.
Forbes Road - The Clear Fields
Jenner Township, PA · est. 1952
When General Forbes weighed how to reach Fort Duquesne in 1758, open meadows like the Clear Fields along the Raystown Path tipped the balance. Ample forage for cavalry and draft animals led him to favor this northern route over Braddock's older road to the south — a logistical choice that shaped the whole campaign. Fort Dudgeon, known as Tomahawk Camp, stood a short way to the north.