Old State Line
McKean, Erie County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
The northern boundary of Pennsylvania, before the purchase of the Erie Triangle in 1792, crossed the highway at this point. The State paid $151,640.25 for the Erie tract and its port on the Lakes.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Before 1792, Pennsylvania's northern edge ran right across this ground, and the land above it belonged to no state's settled claim. That year Pennsylvania bought the wedge known as the Erie Triangle, paying just over $151,000 to gain a genuine harbor on the Great Lakes. Without that purchase, the state would have been boxed out of Lake Erie entirely.
Why it matters
The Erie Triangle gave Pennsylvania its only Great Lakes port, shaping the commerce, shipbuilding, and westward trade of the young republic.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early years of the American republic, the map of the new nation was still being drawn — and where lines fell had enormous consequences. Pennsylvania's northern boundary, as originally surveyed, ran across this very ground. Above that line lay a wedge of territory that did not clearly belong to the state, and, crucially, it included the shoreline that could give Pennsylvania a true harbor on Lake Erie.
The 1780s and 1790s were a time of sorting out exactly these questions. States, the new federal government, and Native nations all held claims to lands in the interior, and settling them meant surveys, negotiations, and purchases. A boundary was not just a line on paper; it decided access to water, trade, and the routes westward.
For Pennsylvania, the stakes at this northern edge were unusually high, because without the land above the old line the state would have no genuine port on the Great Lakes at all.
People & events
The marker records the resolution of that problem: the purchase of the Erie Triangle in 1792. Pennsylvania acquired the wedge of land at its northwestern corner, and with it the lakefront and harbor the state had lacked. The price, the marker tells us precisely, was $151,640.25 — an oddly exact figure that makes the transaction feel very real, a deal measured to the cent.
That purchase moved the meaningful edge of the state northward, past the old boundary that had crossed this spot. What had been the "state line" became the "old" state line — a former border, remembered by a marker rather than marked by a fence.
The transaction was, in essence, an act of foresight. For a sum that a growing state could manage, Pennsylvania secured something it could never have created on its own: a doorway to the inland seas.
Its place in the American story
A port on Lake Erie was not a luxury; it was a gateway. Access to the Great Lakes tied a state into the vast inland water system that would drive American commerce, shipbuilding, and westward expansion in the nineteenth century. The Erie Triangle gave Pennsylvania a seat at that table.
The episode also illustrates how the United States assembled itself piece by piece in its early decades — not only through grand events but through surveys, boundary adjustments, and land purchases that quietly determined the shape of states and the flow of trade. This modest wedge of land is a case study in that patient, consequential work.
Stand here and you are standing on a former national-scale decision point. A line once ran across this road that, had it stayed the boundary, would have left a major state landlocked from the Great Lakes. Because it did not stay, the commerce of a whole region found its outlet.
If you visit
The thing to appreciate here is invisible, and that is what makes it fun. There is no wall, no river — just the knowledge that an important boundary once crossed this very stretch of road, and that everything to the north of it was, for a time, beyond the state's settled reach.
Stand on the spot and picture the line. Behind you, established Pennsylvania; ahead, the triangle that a single purchase folded into the state and turned toward the lake. Few places let you feel a border that no longer exists quite so directly.
It makes a natural stop on a Lake Erie–bound road trip through this corner of the state. Let it set up the drive north: as you continue toward the water, you are traveling across the very ground that Pennsylvania bought in 1792 to reach the lake — and you can decide for yourself whether it was money well spent.
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 events
- · Purchase of the Erie Triangle, 1792
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Old State Line
Waterford Township, PA · est. 1946
This spot once sat on Pennsylvania's original northern boundary, the line that hemmed the state in before 1792. In that year the commonwealth paid more than $151,000 for the Erie Triangle, buying itself a foothold and a port on Lake Erie. The old line, long erased from maps, still crossed the highway here within living memory of the marker's makers.
Old State Line
Girard, PA · est. 1946
Here the highway crosses what was once the top of Pennsylvania, the northern boundary that stood before the state reached Lake Erie. In 1792 Pennsylvania purchased the Erie Triangle for over $151,000, extending its territory to the lakeshore and its all-important harbor. The transaction turned a landlocked corner into a gateway.
Old State Line
Springfield Township, PA · est. 1946
Before 1792 this was the literal edge of Pennsylvania, its northern line running across the road at this point. The state then bought the Erie Triangle for more than $151,000, gaining both the tract and the Lake Erie port that came with it. What had been a boundary became the middle of a growing commonwealth.
Old State Line Historical Marker
Wattsburg, PA
In the young republic's first decades, Pennsylvania's northern line ran right across this road—until 1792, when the state secured the wedge of land known as the Erie Triangle. That purchase, for which Pennsylvania paid the federal government the oddly precise sum of $151,640.25, gave the commonwealth something no other arrangement could: its own frontage on Lake Erie and a deep-water port at Presque Isle. This unassuming spot near Wattsburg marks where the old boundary once lay, before the map was redrawn to reach the Great Lakes.