Forbes Road, 1758, Fort Bedford to Fort Duquesne - The Forks (PLAQUE)
Napier Township, Bedford County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
And the road cut by Colonel James Burd, in 1755, and the Forbes Road diverge here. Forbes Road leading Southwestward to Shawnee Cabins Encampment 4 1/2 miles from Fort Bedford.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
At this spot two frontier military roads parted ways: the older path cut by Colonel James Burd in 1755 and the Forbes Road blazed in 1758. From here the Forbes Road bent southwestward toward the Shawnee Cabins encampment, only a few miles from Fort Bedford. The junction marks how successive campaigns layered their routes across the Pennsylvania mountains.
Why it matters
The diverging roads illustrate a decade of British efforts to push military highways through the Alleghenies during the French and Indian War, groundwork for the nation's later westward reach.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The mountains of what is now Bedford County were, in the 1750s, a frontier seam where colonial ambition met a hard wilderness. To move soldiers and supplies west toward the French stronghold at the forks of the Ohio, the British had to build their way across ridge after ridge — and they did it more than once, in more than one campaign.
That is why this spot matters: it is a junction, a place where two different attempts to conquer these mountains crossed paths. The French and Indian War was as much a contest of engineering and logistics as of muskets, and the Alleghenies were the great obstacle both sides understood.
Around a fixed point like Fort Bedford — the old Raystown post — distances and directions were carefully recorded, because in trackless country a road and a milepost were the difference between an army that arrived and one that starved.
People & events
Two names meet at this fork. The earlier road was cut in 1755 by Colonel James Burd, part of the effort to open a supply line westward during the campaigns of that year. The later one, blazed in 1758, belonged to General John Forbes and his methodical march on the French fort at the forks of the Ohio.
Burd's road and Forbes's road diverge here, and from this junction the Forbes Road bends southwest toward the Shawnee Cabins encampment, only a few miles out from Fort Bedford. Seeing the two routes split at one point is like reading the growth rings of a frontier: each campaign added its own line across the same stubborn mountains.
Forbes himself directed his advance slowly and deliberately, building road and forts as he went — an approach that let him take the forks late in 1758 when the outnumbered French abandoned and burned their post. The older Burd route was part of the layered groundwork that made such a campaign thinkable at all.
Its place in the American story
A place where two military roads part ways is a small monument to a large idea: that controlling a continent meant first being able to cross it. Over a single decade the British cut, recut, and improved highways through the Alleghenies, and this junction shows that effort as a physical fork in the ground.
Those war roads outlived their wars. Routes pushed through the mountains for cannon and supply wagons became the paths of settlers and traders afterward, turning a military corridor into a settlement one. The layering of Burd's road and Forbes's road is the layering of American westward movement in miniature.
Stand at the divergence and you are looking at the groundwork of the nation's later reach toward the Ohio Valley — not a grand battlefield, but the humble infrastructure without which none of the grander events could have happened.
If you visit
Look for the logic of the land here. A fork in an old road is rarely random; it follows the easiest line through difficult country. Try to read why the routes split where they do — the pull of a valley, the avoidance of a steep grade.
The surrounding country is classic ridge-and-valley Pennsylvania: long wooded spines and quiet hollows, with the mountains never far from view. It is a landscape best appreciated at road-trip pace, one marker leading you toward the next.
Use this junction as a hinge in your day. From here you can imagine the campaigns fanning out toward Fort Bedford in one direction and the encampments of the mountain climb in the other, and the plaque becomes a doorway rather than a full stop.
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
- · John Forbes
- · James Burd
Related events
- · Forbes Expedition of 1758
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Forbes Road
Napier Township, PA · est. 1947
During the French and Indian War, Britain raced to seize the Forks of the Ohio from the French. In 1755 Colonel James Burd hacked a supply road through this Allegheny wilderness, and in 1758 General John Forbes drove a new military road westward toward Fort Ligonier and, ultimately, Fort Duquesne. This quiet Bedford County intersection is where the later Forbes Road split from Burd's earlier trace, sending the army deeper into the mountains.
Forbes Road, 1758, Fort Bedford to Fort Duquesne - Fort Bedford-Raystown (PLAQUE)
Bedford, PA · est. 1930
Fort Bedford, built at the frontier settlement of Raystown, served as the great supply depot and mustering ground for General John Forbes' 1758 campaign against Fort Duquesne. Here an army of nearly eight thousand men gathered before setting out westward toward the forks of the Ohio. The fort anchored the eastern end of the road that still bears Forbes' name.
Bedford County
Bedford, PA · est. 1982
One of Pennsylvania's oldest western counties, Bedford was formed in 1771 and once stretched across much of the state's frontier. In 1758, during the French and Indian War, Fort Bedford rose here as a key link in the British campaign against the French, and the Forbes Road was cut through the wilderness to reach the Ohio country. That military road became one of the great early highways carrying settlers and commerce west.
Fraser Tavern
Bedford, PA · est. 1952
As General Forbes's army pushed toward the Ohio in 1758, frontier settlements sprang up in its wake. Here John Fraser and his wife established an inn and trading post that same year, feeding officers at nearby Fort Raystown, the outpost that grew into Bedford. Fraser was no ordinary tavernkeeper—he had served as a guide and interpreter for a young Colonel George Washington in the tense years before the war.