Forbes Road - Raystown Path
Southampton Township, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
At Shippensburg, the Raystown Path forked: one branch led directly west over three steep mts. to Burnt Cabins; the other, taken by General Forbes to avoid heavy grades, went south round Parnells Knob to Fort Loudon, crossing the Tuscarora Mountain at Cowan Gap.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
At Shippensburg the old Raystown Path split, and in 1758 General John Forbes had to choose his army's line of march west. One branch climbed directly over three steep mountains toward Burnt Cabins; Forbes instead took the southern fork around Parnells Knob to Fort Loudon, crossing the Tuscarora Mountain at Cowan Gap to avoid the punishing grades. The choice shaped where his military road—and later settlement—would run.
Why it matters
These wilderness paths and the decisions made along them determined the routes of westward travel, turning an Indian trading trail into the spine of frontier Pennsylvania.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the middle of the eighteenth century, the land west of the Susquehanna was the far edge of the British colonial world. Beyond the last farms and stockades rose ridge after ridge of the Pennsylvania mountains, and the only way through them was on foot, following paths worn smooth over generations by Native peoples who knew the country far better than any European mapmaker.
The Raystown Path was one of these ancient routes, running west from the Shippensburg area toward the Allegheny country, threading the gaps where the mountains allowed. Long before it carried soldiers, it carried traders, hunters, and messengers — part of a web of trails that laced the eastern woodlands together.
By the late 1750s the British and French empires were locked in a struggle for control of the Ohio Valley, and these quiet footpaths suddenly mattered enormously. An army moving west needed to know not just where a trail went, but which route a column of men, wagons, and cannon could actually survive.
People & events
In 1758, a British and colonial force set out to drive the French from the forks of the Ohio, and the man leading it, General John Forbes, faced a decision that would echo for centuries: how to get an army across the mountains of central Pennsylvania.
At Shippensburg the old path forked. One branch drove straight west over three steep mountains toward Burnt Cabins — the shorter line on a map, but a brutal one for laden wagons and struggling horses. Forbes chose the other way. He swung his march south, around Parnells Knob to Fort Loudon, and crossed the Tuscarora Mountain at Cowan Gap, trading extra miles for gentler grades his supply train could actually climb.
It was the kind of unglamorous logistical judgment that decides campaigns. Forbes was gravely ill through much of the expedition, yet the careful, methodical road he pushed westward — building as it went — became the axis of his whole advance.
Its place in the American story
The choice made here was about far more than one summer's campaign. Roads cut for armies rarely disappear when the fighting ends; they become the ruts that settlers, freight wagons, and eventually turnpikes follow. Where a general decided to route his march, towns later grew and trade later flowed.
The struggle Forbes was part of — known in America as the French and Indian War — helped decide whether the interior of the continent would fall within the British orbit, and it set in motion the westward push that would define the young country. The mountain gaps that made that push possible were the same ones Native travelers had used for ages.
So a fork in a wilderness trail becomes a small window onto a large truth: America's westward expansion did not follow straight lines drawn on paper. It followed the land — the passable gap, the tolerable grade — and the human decisions made in the face of it.
If you visit
This is high, folded country, and the best way to feel the story is simply to notice the shape of the land around you. The ridges here run in long parallel walls, and the roads still bend to find the low places through them, exactly as travelers on foot once did.
Look toward the gaps in the mountains — the notches where a modern road slips through. Those are the same kinds of openings that made a march like Forbes's possible, and standing below one, it's easy to understand why an exhausted army would go miles out of its way to use it.
If you're making a road trip through south-central Pennsylvania, let this marker reframe the drive. The curves and climbs that feel like scenery today were once matters of survival for the people threading these mountains, and the quiet valleys around Cowan Gap reward an unhurried pace.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Plan your visit
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Museums & culture
- Appalachian Trail Museum10.1 mi away
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Related people
- · John Forbes
Related events
- · French and Indian War
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Forbes Road - Raystown Path
Carlisle, PA · est. 1952
In 1758, during the French and Indian War, General John Forbes set out from his base at Carlisle to seize Fort Duquesne at the Forks of the Ohio. Rather than follow Braddock's ill-fated earlier route, Forbes drove a new road westward, keeping as close as army wagons allowed to the old Raystown Indian and Traders Path. Axemen under Colonel Henry Bouquet widened the trail into a military road that ended with the French abandoning and burning the fort.
Forbes Road - Raystown Path
Dublin Township, PA · est. 1952
The Raystown Path was one of the great Indian trails threading the Allegheny ridges of central Pennsylvania, and in 1758 it became a corridor of war. During the French and Indian War, General John Forbes cut a military road westward toward the French stronghold at the forks of the Ohio, throwing up a chain of forts to guard his slow, methodical advance. The towns strung along his line of march — Littleton, Bedford, Ligonier, and finally Pittsburgh — still carry the names of those wilderness garrisons.
Braddock Expedition
Shippensburg, PA · est. 1961
In 1755, as General Edward Braddock's army marched toward the French at Fort Duquesne, supplies for the expedition were stockpiled in Edward Shippen's stout stone house at Shippensburg. His son-in-law James Burd cut a road westward to move those provisions toward the front. After Braddock's crushing defeat, the goods that remained were handed out to settlers fleeing Indian raids along the exposed Pennsylvania frontier.
Fort Chambers
Chambersburg, PA · est. 1947
In 1756, as the French and Indian War set the frontier ablaze, pioneer landowner Col. Benjamin Chambers fortified his house and mill with a stockade and cannon for defense against Native raids. Chambers had settled at this junction of waters years earlier and founded the town that still bears his name. His fortified homestead anchored one of the exposed western settlements during the war's dangerous years.