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.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Around the middle of the eighteenth century, the upper Delaware valley was a frontier in the truest sense—a thinly settled edge of the colonial world where European farm families lived at the far reach of law, trade, and safety. This was raw country, its forests dense and its distances long, and the people who came to break the soil did so knowing they were far from help.
The settlers who pushed into this region were a mix of nationalities, among them Dutch families whose roots traced back to the earlier colonial presence along the Hudson and the lower Delaware. They carried with them building traditions of stone and heavy timber, and a hard-won understanding that a home on the frontier had to be more than a place to sleep.
These were also decades of recurring tension and, at times, open violence between colonists and Native peoples, as competing claims to the land collided. In such a world, ordinary life was shadowed by the possibility of sudden danger, and communities organized themselves around places of refuge.
People & events
About 1740, a settler named Simon Westfael—remembered as one of the earliest Dutch inhabitants of this region—raised a stout stone structure on this ground. It was, first of all, a home. But its thick stone walls made it something more: a place strong enough to shelter neighbors when trouble came.
In the memory of the community it earned names that outlived its builder—the Old Stone Fort, and Fort Matamoras. Those names tell you how it was used and understood. In an age of frontier warfare, a solidly built house became the neighborhood's stronghold, a spot where scattered families could gather behind stone until danger passed.
We should be careful not to overstate what we cannot know in detail. What the record preserves is clear enough and worth honoring: an early settler, an early date, and a building that served both as a household and as a refuge in dangerous times.
Its place in the American story
The story here is the story of the American frontier in miniature. Long before the country existed, families were staking their futures on distant land, and their first task was simply to survive. A house built to double as a fort captures that reality more honestly than any monument to a single battle could.
Structures like this one existed all along the colonial frontier, from New England to the southern backcountry—homes that were also fortifications, built by people who could not count on protection from anywhere else. They embody a chapter of American settlement that was neither romantic nor simple: hard labor, real fear, and an uneasy coexistence with the Native peoples whose homeland this was.
Remembering a stone refuge, rather than only a victory or a founder, keeps our history grounded. It reminds us that the nation grew outward one fortified farmstead at a time, in places exactly like this.
If you visit
You've reached the northeastern tip of Pennsylvania, where the land meets the upper Delaware near the point the modern town of Matamoras takes its name from. Come to this marker with the eighteenth century in mind and let the geography set the mood—this was once the far edge of the settled world, and the river valley still carries a sense of being a threshold between places.
As you read, picture the difference between our era and the one the marker describes. Where you see a settled community, the settlers saw exposed frontier. Where a stone house today looks merely old and picturesque, its builders saw walls that might one day stand between their families and harm.
This is a rewarding stop for anyone tracing the colonial frontier along the Delaware. Let it anchor a slower drive through the valley, and use it as an invitation to imagine the wary, watchful lives of the region's earliest European families.
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
- · Simon Westfael
Themes & tags
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