Fort McClure
Bloomsburg, Columbia County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Early in 1781 the McClure house was stockaded by the noted Indian fighter, Moses Van Campen, to protect settlers in this region after destruction of Fort Jenkins in 1780. Site on the north bank of the Susquehanna in present Bloomsburg.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
After frontier raids destroyed nearby Fort Jenkins in 1780, the noted borderland fighter Moses Van Campen stockaded the McClure house early in 1781 to shelter settlers along the north bank of the Susquehanna. The improvised fort stood in what is now Bloomsburg, part of a chain of refuges thrown up as the Revolution's frontier war ground on. Such places were less military garrisons than desperate havens for families caught between armies and raiding parties.
Why it matters
Fort McClure marks how ordinary homesteads became fortresses during the Revolution's frontier fighting, a war of survival waged house by house.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the early 1780s, the American Revolution had settled into a long, grinding stalemate along the frontier of the Susquehanna's north branch. The great battles that history remembers were fought far away, but here in the Pennsylvania backcountry the war was a matter of isolated farms, forest trails, and the constant fear of a raid at dawn.
This was borderland country, where scattered settler families had pushed up the river valleys onto land that was still contested, still dangerous, and still very much the homeland of Native nations allied against the rebel cause. The frontier war was never really about capturing cities. It was about who could hold the ground.
When a fort in the region was destroyed in 1780, the shock rippled outward. Families understood immediately what it meant: the thin line of defense had been broken, and the valley was exposed. What happened next at the McClure house was a direct answer to that fear.
People & events
Into this moment stepped Moses Van Campen, remembered in these valleys as a noted Indian fighter of the borderlands. Early in 1781 he set about turning an ordinary farmhouse into something that could hold against a raid — stockading the McClure house, ringing it with a wall of upright timbers to shelter the settlers who had nowhere else to run.
It was a practical, improvised kind of defense. There was no garrison of regulars marching to the rescue, no cannon, no engineer's plan. There was a house, a man who knew the frontier, and the labor of the families themselves, racing to build walls before the next alarm.
The stockade rose after the destruction of a nearby fort the year before had left the region dangerously open. Whether or not it was ever tested in a fight, its purpose was plain from the first log: to give the people of this stretch of river a place to gather, bar the gate, and wait out the danger together.
Its place in the American story
The Revolution most Americans picture — Continental armies, famous generals, decisive battles — is only half the story. The other half was fought like this, house by house, along a frontier that stretched for hundreds of miles. Places like the stockaded McClure house are where that quieter, harder war becomes visible.
These improvised forts tell us how independence was actually defended in the backcountry: not by professional soldiers but by neighbors, local fighters, and families who fortified their own homes because no one else would. The war of survival they waged kept settlement clinging to the river valleys through years when abandoning the frontier would have been the easier choice.
Understanding this site means understanding that the Revolution was also a brutal frontier conflict, one in which Native nations fought to hold their land and settlers fought to keep theirs. The stockade around a single farmhouse is a small monument to how total, and how personal, that struggle became.
If you visit
You'll find this spot on the north bank of the Susquehanna, in what is now Bloomsburg. The house and its wall of timbers are long gone, so what you're really visiting is the ground itself — the river, the terrain, and the sightlines that made this a place worth fortifying.
Stand facing the water and let the modern town fall away for a moment. The Susquehanna was the highway of this frontier, the route by which news, danger, and refugees all traveled. Picture a plain farmhouse ringed with sharpened logs and a gate that could be barred at the first alarm, and you have the scene.
It makes a rewarding stop on a drive through the river valley, especially if you're tracing the frontier story of the Revolution. Give yourself a few minutes to read the marker, look out over the water, and imagine the families who once counted this modest spot as the safest place they knew.
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
- · Moses Van Campen
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Fort Wheeler
Scott Township, PA · est. 1948
In 1778 the frontier scout Moses Van Campen raised a stockade fort along Fishing Creek to shield local families from the raids that swept this valley during the Revolution. Attacked at least once, it served as one of the refuges that let settlement cling to the Susquehanna country through years of border warfare. Van Campen became a legendary figure in the region, remembered for his exploits as a scout and Indian fighter.
Fort Jenkins
South Centre Township, PA · est. 1948
During the Revolution the Susquehanna frontier was a war zone, and settlers here fortified a house on the riverbank as a refuge between 1778 and 1780 until raiders destroyed it. The violence along this valley was part of the wider frontier warfare that pitted settlers against British-allied Native nations far from the war's famous battlefields. In a later, more peaceful chapter, the ground passed to James Wilson, a signer of the Declaration and a framer of the Constitution.
Fort Bosley
Derry Township, PA · est. 1947
In 1777, as the Revolution raged and the Pennsylvania frontier grew dangerous, settlers along the forks of Chillisquaque Creek fortified Bosley's mill, stockading and garrisoning it against raids. Such improvised frontier forts were the everyday reality of the backcountry war, where mills, farms, and blockhouses doubled as refuges. The site reflects a conflict fought not only on famous battlefields but in the woods and clearings of the northern branch of the Susquehanna.
The Sullivan Expedition Against the Iroquois Indians - Fort Augusta - PLAQUE
Sunbury, PA · est. 1929
Fort Augusta, guarding the forks of the Susquehanna at Sunbury, was first chosen as a rendezvous for the Sullivan campaign. From here Lt. Col. Adam Hubley's regiment — the one unit quartered at the fort — marched to join the offensive against the Six Nations in 1779. The old fort thus became one of several launching points feeding troops into the larger expedition.