Fort Swatara
Union Township, Lebanon County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Originally built by Peter Hedrick, 1755. The stockaded blockhouse was improved in early 1756 by Capt. Frederick Smith to guard Swatara Gap and protect the frontier settlements. The site is on Bohn Lane about a half mile from the intersection.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
As the French and Indian War set the Pennsylvania frontier ablaze in the mid-1750s, settlers threw up fortified blockhouses to shelter their scattered farms. Fort Swatara, first built by Peter Hedrick in 1755 and strengthened by Capt. Frederick Smith in 1756, guarded the strategic Swatara Gap against raids and gave frontier families a place of refuge in a dangerous season.
Why it matters
Small backcountry forts like this formed the thin defensive line of colonial Pennsylvania during the French and Indian War, marking the violent frontier between empires and Native nations.
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Related people
- · Peter Hedrick
- · Frederick Smith
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Swatara Gap
Union Township, PA · est. 1947
Swatara Gap is a natural break in the Blue Mountain, and in the 1750s it became a dangerous doorway. During the French and Indian War, war parties allied with the French slipped through the gap to strike the scattered farms of the Pennsylvania frontier, and colonial authorities answered by raising Fort Swatara nearby to guard the pass. The steep, wooded notch that had long served as a travel route became a frontline in a brutal borderland conflict.
Reed's Fort
East Hanover Township, PA · est. 1949
In 1755, as war raged along Pennsylvania's frontier, the home of Adam Reed just south of this point was fortified into a place of refuge. From here Reed and a company of Rangers drawn from Hanover Township stood guard over the surrounding countryside during a period of frequent raids. It was one link in the improvised chain of frontier defenses that ordinary settlers threw up when the empire's protection fell short.
Blue Mountain Forts
East Hanover Township, PA · est. 1949
As frontier violence flared along the Blue Mountain in the 1750s and 1760s, Pennsylvania's colonial government paid volunteer companies to shield its exposed settlers. A chain of six fortified loghouse stations stretched roughly twenty-three miles from Fort Hunter on the Susquehanna to the Swatara Creek, garrisoned in 1763–64 by the Paxton Rangers, echoing an earlier defensive line held in 1756–57. These crude forts marked the raw, contested edge of British settlement during the French and Indian War and Pontiac's uprising.
Fort Manada
East Hanover Township, PA · est. 1970
During the French and Indian War, settler James Brown's fortified log house served as a frontier strongpoint, garrisoned as Fort Manada from January 1756 to May 1757 as an outpost of nearby Fort Swatara. A small complement of about twenty-one officers and men manned it against raids along Pennsylvania's exposed backcountry. No description of the structure itself survives, leaving only its story on the land.