Old Stone Fort
Matamoras, Pike County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Sometimes referred to as Fort Matamoras, this stone structure was built about 1740 by Simon Westfael, one of the earliest Dutch settlers in the region. It was a refuge from Indians in days of frontier warfare.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Around 1740, when the upper Delaware valley was a raw and contested frontier, Dutch settler Simon Westfael raised a sturdy stone house here that neighbors could flee to when violence flared. Structures like this doubled as homes and fortifications in an era when European farming families lived amid the tensions of frontier warfare. Local memory long called it the Old Stone Fort, or Fort Matamoras.
Why it matters
It marks the hard early decades of European settlement in the Pennsylvania backcountry, when survival depended on stone walls and wary coexistence with Native peoples.
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Related people
- · Simon Westfael
Themes & tags
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