Shawnee-Minisink Archaeological Site
Smithfield Township, Monroe County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Nearly 13,000 years old, this location, near the confluence of the Delaware River and Brodhead Creek, is one of the earliest dated Native American sites in the northeastern US. Archaeological investigations uncovered hundreds of stone tools left by the early inhabitants around a series of campfires. Remains of fish and fruit provided evidence of a more diverse diet than expected for the late Ice Age.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Near where the Brodhead Creek meets the Delaware River, the Shawnee-Minisink site preserves traces of some of the earliest known people in the northeastern United States — campfires, hundreds of stone tools, and the remains of fish and fruit left nearly 13,000 years ago. These finds surprised archaeologists, revealing that late Ice Age inhabitants ate a more varied diet than the big-game-hunter image long suggested. The site is a touchstone for understanding the first Americans in the region.
Why it matters
It is one of the oldest securely dated Native American sites in the Northeast, reshaping how scholars picture the earliest human life in North America.
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Nearby & related markers
Nicholas Dupuy (1682-1762) - PLAQUE
Smithfield Township, PA · est. 1930
In 1727 Nicholas Dupuy became the first European settler at Shawnee on the Delaware, buying some 3,000 acres — including river islands — from the Minsi (Munsee) band of the Lenape. He descended from Huguenot refugees who had fled religious persecution in France and reached New Amsterdam in 1662. By mid-century the growing community had land set aside, through proprietor William Allen, for a Dutch Reformed congregation that endures today as a Presbyterian church.
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.
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.
Monroe County
Stroudsburg, PA · est. 1983
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.