Monroe County
Stroudsburg, Monroe County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Formed April 1, 1836 out of Northampton and Pike counties. Named for President James Monroe. Site of Indian raids, 1755-82, and of a segment of Sullivan's March. Pocono Mountains famed as a resort area. County seat, Stroudsburg, was incorporated in 1815.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Monroe County was formed in 1836 from Northampton and Pike counties and named for President James Monroe. The land had earlier been a frontier battleground, marked by Indian raids between 1755 and 1782 and crossed by part of General Sullivan's 1779 march against the Iroquois. In later generations its Pocono Mountains blossomed into one of the Northeast's most famous resort regions.
Why it matters
The county's history spans the violent frontier of the colonial and Revolutionary eras and the rise of American leisure travel, showing how a contested borderland became a vacation destination.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The land that became Monroe County was, for a long stretch of the eighteenth century, a contested frontier. Set among the ridges and valleys of northeastern Pennsylvania, it lay along the shifting line between colonial settlement and Native homelands. According to the marker, the area saw Indian raids across a span of years from 1755 to 1782 — a period that runs from the French and Indian War through the Revolution, decades in which this borderland was repeatedly a place of danger and conflict.
That long era of frontier violence was part of a much larger struggle over who would control the interior of the continent. Colonial families pushing into the region, and the Native nations whose lands they entered, were caught up in wars that reached far beyond any single valley. For those who lived here, the conflict was intimate and local — a matter of isolated farms, fortified houses, and hard uncertainty.
By the time the county was formally organized in 1836, that frontier age had passed into memory. The county seat of Stroudsburg had already been incorporated in 1815, and the region was settling into a new and more peaceful chapter.
People & events
The county was named for James Monroe, the president whose name it carries — a choice that placed this northeastern Pennsylvania county within the patriotic naming traditions of the early republic. Formed in 1836 out of Northampton and Pike counties, it drew its territory from older jurisdictions as the region's population grew and needed its own government.
The marker records that a segment of Sullivan's March passed through this area. In 1779, during the Revolution, General John Sullivan led a large military expedition against the Iroquois nations allied with the British — a campaign that cut through the wilderness of what is now Pennsylvania and New York. The route of that march across this country ties the county directly to one of the Revolution's harder and more sobering chapters.
Together with the years of frontier raids the marker notes, these events sketch a region shaped by conflict long before it became a county. Stroudsburg, incorporated in 1815, grew into the settled heart of a place whose earlier history had been anything but settled.
Its place in the American story
Monroe County's story captures a transformation that played out across much of America: a violent, contested frontier giving way, over generations, to peace and even prosperity. The raids the marker records and the passage of Sullivan's 1779 expedition root this ground in the national struggles of the colonial and Revolutionary eras — struggles over land, sovereignty, and the future of the continent.
Sullivan's March in particular connects this county to a difficult truth of the nation's founding: the Revolution was not only a war between colonists and Britain but also a conflict that fell heavily on Native peoples. Carrying that history honestly is part of what a marker like this can do.
And then there is the county's later fame. Its Pocono Mountains became one of the Northeast's celebrated resort regions, a destination for rest and recreation. The arc from embattled borderland to beloved vacation country is a distinctly American one — the same landscape that once meant danger and hardship became, in time, a place people traveled to for pleasure.
If you visit
Begin in Stroudsburg, the county seat, whose incorporation back in 1815 predates the county itself. It's a good place to feel the settled, established side of this region's history before you go looking for its wilder past.
As you travel through the surrounding country, keep in mind the two very different stories layered on this land. This was frontier ground marked by raids over many years and crossed by a Revolutionary military expedition — and it is also the gateway to the Pocono Mountains, long famous as a place to get away. The same ridges hold both histories.
This marker suits a trip that mixes history with the outdoors. Take time in the mountains the county is known for, and let the contrast sink in: you are relaxing in a landscape that earlier generations knew as a hard and dangerous frontier. That distance between then and now is itself worth the drive.
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
- · James Monroe
Related events
- · Sullivan's March
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Jacob Stroud (1735-1806)
Stroudsburg, PA · est. 1991
Jacob Stroud (1735-1806) was a militia colonel and Revolutionary patriot who fortified his home on this frontier as Fort Penn during the dangerous years of the war. He served in Pennsylvania's 1776 constitutional convention and later in the state legislature, then in 1799 founded the town that bears his name, laying out its streets with his son Daniel. His life spans the transformation of this Pocono country from exposed frontier to settled community.
Sullivan Expedition Against the Iroquois Indians, 1779 (Fort Penn)- PLAQUE
Stroudsburg, PA · est. 1929
In the spring of 1779, General George Washington ordered a punishing campaign into the heart of Iroquois country to end frontier raids allied with the British. Here at Fort Penn, the fortified home of Col. Jacob Stroud served as a rendezvous where companies gathered before joining the main army. From this staging ground in the Pocono foothills, men and supplies funneled westward toward the march that would follow.
Colonel Jacob Stroud - PLAQUE
Stroudsburg, PA · est. 1931
This graveyard began as the cemetery of the Mission of Dansbury, a Moravian outpost started in 1743 near where Daniel Brodhead had settled in 1736. The mission chapel was destroyed during the Indian uprising of 1755 amid the French and Indian War, then rebuilt. Colonel Jacob Stroud — the frontier officer and founder of Stroudsburg — lies buried here.
Dansbury Mission
Stroudsburg, PA · est. 1947
About 1744, frontier founder Daniel Brodhead raised a building here for Moravian missionaries, part of the remarkable Moravian effort to carry their faith to settlers and Native peoples along the Pennsylvania frontier. The mission stood barely a decade: in 1755, as the French and Indian War set the backcountry aflame, it was destroyed in the raiding that emptied the region. Its site lay beside what is now the cemetery.