Fort Wheeler
Scott Township, Columbia County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
A stockade-type fort was built here in 1778 along Fishing Creek by Moses Van Campen. It served during the Revolution as a refuge against the Indians, by whom it was once attacked. Van Campen was the noted Indian scout of this region.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
Small creekside forts like Fort Wheeler show how the Revolution's frontier was defended by local militia and scouts, not regular armies, in a struggle for the land itself.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1778, the Revolution's frontier war reached a fever pitch along the creeks and river branches of the Pennsylvania backcountry. It was one of the most fearful years of the entire conflict here, a season when raids swept through the valleys and settlers weighed every day whether to stay on their land or flee to safety.
This was rugged, half-settled country, threaded by streams like Fishing Creek that served as both routes of travel and lines of exposure. Families had come to farm the bottomlands, but they had settled on a violent border, where the war was not an abstraction but a threat that could arrive out of the treeline without warning.
There was little in the way of regular military protection this far out. Defense fell to the settlers themselves and to the local scouts who knew the ground. In that vacuum, the answer was to build — to throw up walls where people could shelter when the alarm went up.
People & events
The man who raised the stockade here was Moses Van Campen, described on the marker as the noted Indian scout of this region — a reputation earned in exactly the kind of dangerous frontier service the times demanded. In 1778 he built a stockade-type fort along Fishing Creek, a ring of timber walls meant to shield the local families from the raids that were sweeping the valley.
It did not stand untested. At least once the fort was attacked, which tells you that this was no idle precaution. The walls Van Campen built were the difference between a raid that scattered a settlement and one that the settlers could survive behind a barred gate.
Van Campen became a legend in these valleys, remembered long afterward for his exploits as a scout and fighter on a perilous border. But the fort itself is the more telling monument: proof that the war here was defended by local knowledge and local hands, one stockade at a time.
Its place in the American story
The story of the Revolution is usually told through its armies, but along the frontier it was told through places exactly like this — small creekside forts, built and manned by militia, scouts, and the families themselves. Understanding this site means seeing the war as the people who lived here experienced it: not as a campaign, but as survival.
These refuges reveal a crucial truth about how the American frontier was held during the war. There was no line of professional soldiers to fall back on. The defense of the backcountry rested on ordinary settlers and the handful of experienced scouts who could rally them, warn them, and give them walls to hide behind.
It was also, unmistakably, a war over the land itself — a violent contest between settlers pressing into the valleys and the Native nations fighting to hold their homeland. A stockade on Fishing Creek is a reminder that American independence, out here, was won and defended in a grim struggle far from the famous battlefields.
If you visit
Look for this site in Scott Township, near the course of Fishing Creek. The stockade is gone, so the reward of a visit is in the setting — the creek, the low ground it waters, and the sense of a landscape that was once a frontier edge rather than settled countryside.
Take a moment near the water and think about what a creek meant to people in 1778. It was a source of life and a line of danger both, a place where a fort made sense precisely because this was where travel and threat converged.
It's a quiet, unassuming stop, well suited to a slow drive through the Columbia County countryside. Read the marker, picture a timber wall standing against the woods, and remember that this modest ground was once considered a place of refuge in a very dangerous year.
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
- · Moses Van Campen
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Fort McClure
Bloomsburg, PA · est. 1948
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.
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.
Sugarloaf Massacre
Sugarloaf Township, PA · est. 1947
In the autumn of 1780 a party of Native warriors and Loyalist Tories, turned back from an attempt on Fort Augusta, fell upon a detachment of Northumberland County militia near here. The surprise attack on September 11 left the small company overwhelmed, one of many such bloody clashes that made the Pennsylvania frontier a war zone long after the fighting had shifted elsewhere.