Pine Plains

Athens, PA · est. 1947

Where the Chemung meets the Susquehanna, this river junction has funneled travelers for as long as people have moved through the region — long enough that Native peoples knew it as Teaoga, and later generations as Tioga Point. Connecticut settlers laid out a village here in 1786, but a decade earlier the same ground had served as a staging area for General Sullivan's 1779 Revolutionary campaign against the Iroquois towns of central New York. Its position made it, for centuries, the natural gateway between the New York interior and Pennsylvania.

Athens, PA · est. 1929

Teaoga was a key Iroquois village at the forks of the rivers, and in August 1779 it became the staging ground for General John Sullivan's army during its campaign against the Six Nations. From roughly August 11 to 26 the Continental force encamped near here before pressing deeper into Iroquois country. This marker fixes the village's site relative to that fateful summer of the Sullivan Expedition.

Athens, PA · est. 1947

On August 18, 1779, General John Sullivan raised a fort on the high ground between the Chemung and Susquehanna rivers, commanding both waterways at once. With a supporting camp on the flats below, the post became the launching point for Sullivan's expedition into central New York — a scorched-earth campaign that broke the military power of the Tory and Iroquois alliance allied with Britain. The fort's brief life belied its role in one of the Revolution's most consequential frontier operations.

Athens, PA · est. 1948

At the narrow neck of land where the Chemung and Susquehanna rivers nearly meet, Native travelers once lifted their canoes from the water and carried them a hundred and ninety yards overland. This short portage linked two great river highways of the Northeast, a well-worn shortcut used for generations before European settlement reached the valley. Such carrying paths were the hinges of Indigenous travel and trade across the region.