John Bannister Gibson

Spring Township, PA · est. 1929

John Bannister Gibson was born on this Perry County ground in November 1780, the son of Col. George Gibson and Anna West Gibson. He rose to become Chief Justice of Pennsylvania from 1827 to 1851, one of the most influential American jurists of his generation, whose opinions shaped the young state's law. The marker honors a legal mind the inscription calls unequaled in its fame.

Bloomfield, PA · est. 1987

This institution began in 1837 as Bloomfield Academy, its first building, "The Maples," completed in 1840. In 1914 Theodore K. Long acquired the school and, after his son William Carson Long died, renamed it in his memory. It has operated as a military school since 1919—the oldest such school in Pennsylvania.

Carlisle, PA · est. 1982

Standing since 1757, Carlisle Barracks is the oldest active Army post in the United States, born on the colonial frontier during the era of the French and Indian War. Its ground records nearly every chapter of American conflict: a stone powder magazine raised by Hessian prisoners during the Revolution still survives, and Confederate troops put the post to the torch on July 1, 1863, as the Gettysburg campaign swept north. From 1879 to 1918 it housed the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, a nationally significant and deeply controversial experiment in forced assimilation, before becoming home to the Army War College in 1951.

Carlisle, PA · est. 2002

The poet Marianne Moore spent her formative childhood and school years in Carlisle, living here from 1896 to 1916. Known for her precise eye, wit, and fiercely independent voice, she went on to become one of America's most honored modern poets — an editor and essayist as well — winning the Pulitzer Prize, the Bollingen Prize, and the National Book Award. Her distinctive style helped define 20th-century American verse.