Sullivan's March
Pocono Township, Monroe County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Learned's Tavern marked the end of the second day's march from Easton to Fort Wyoming, at Wilkes-Barre. The army camped here June 19, 1779, after a 16-mile march from Heller's Tavern.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
On June 19, 1779, the army of the Sullivan Expedition camped near Learned's Tavern at the close of its second day out of Easton, having covered sixteen miles from Heller's Tavern on the long road toward Fort Wyoming at Wilkes-Barre. The tavern marked a waypoint on the campaign George Washington launched against the British-allied Iroquois. These recorded halts trace the grueling overland route of one of the Revolution's most consequential frontier operations.
Why it matters
It preserves a step-by-step waypoint of the Sullivan Expedition, the Continental Army's sweeping 1779 campaign against the Iroquois in Pennsylvania and New York.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the summer of 1779 the Revolutionary War had settled into a grinding stalemate in the east, and the fighting spilled onto the frontier. The Wyoming Valley around Wilkes-Barre had seen brutal raids the year before, and the settlements of northeastern Pennsylvania lived in fear of the next one. The wooded ridges of what is now the Poconos were not a scenic getaway then but a hard, roadless barrier between the settled Delaware Valley and the exposed frontier beyond.
Into that landscape the Continental Army cut a military road. An army on the march in 1779 moved at the pace of its slowest wagon, and every day was measured in miles gained against mud, streams, and mountains. The taverns strung along the route — places like Heller's and Learned's — were the only fixed points in a wilderness, and they became the natural markers by which a day's progress was counted.
Sixteen miles sounds modest until you picture it: soldiers hauling supplies up and over forested grades in June heat, then making camp at dusk near a lonely tavern before rising to do it again. This marker preserves one such ordinary, exhausting day in an extraordinary campaign.
People & events
The army passing through here belonged to Major General John Sullivan, a New Hampshire lawyer turned soldier whom George Washington had chosen to lead a sweeping campaign into Iroquois country. The expedition's route ran from Easton, on the Delaware, northwest toward the Wyoming Valley and beyond into what is now upstate New York.
The marker records a precise moment in that advance: the close of the second day out of Easton, June 19, 1779, when the army made camp near Learned's Tavern after covering sixteen miles from Heller's Tavern. These were not battles but the connective tissue of a campaign — the halts, the camps, the slow accumulation of distance that any large operation depends on.
What makes such a modest waypoint worth remembering is exactly its ordinariness. Campaigns are remembered for their climaxes, but they are made of days like this one: a long march, a tavern reached, a night's rest before the next stretch of road.
Its place in the American story
The Sullivan Expedition was one of the largest and most consequential operations the Continental Army mounted on the frontier. It was aimed at the Iroquois nations allied with the British, and its effects on those peoples were severe and lasting — a chapter of the Revolution that reached far beyond the battlefields near the coast, and one that later generations have weighed with growing seriousness.
What a waypoint like this adds to that larger story is a sense of scale and effort. A campaign that appears on a map as a single confident arrow was in reality an army dragging itself overland one tavern at a time. The road it built and the camps it left behind trace the true geography of the operation.
Standing at a spot like this, you're reminded that national history is stitched together from local ground. The decisions were made in distant councils, but they were carried out here, on these ridges, by men on foot.
If you visit
This is a roadside marker rather than a preserved site, so come for the sense of place more than for a building to tour. Look at the lay of the land around you — the rise and fall of the Pocono terrain — and imagine an eighteenth-century army threading through it with wagons and artillery.
The reward here is context. Read the marker, then picture the two taverns it names, one behind and one at hand, and the sixteen miles of forest road that separated them. It turns a stretch of ordinary Pennsylvania countryside into a measured step of a national campaign.
If you're the kind of traveler who likes to follow a story across the map, this marker is one bead on a long thread. The full route ran from the Delaware toward the Wyoming Valley, and spotting these waypoints one after another gives you a road-trip narrative that unfolds mile by mile, just as it did for the army in 1779.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · John Sullivan
Related events
- · Sullivan Expedition
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Sullivan Expedition Against the Iroquois Indians, 1779 (Learned's Tavern)- PLAQUE
Pocono Township, PA · est. 1929
As Sullivan's army pushed into the wilderness in June 1779, it left the settled country behind. This spot, remembered as "the last house on the frontier," marked the end of the second day's march — a sixteen-mile push into thinning settlement. Beyond here lay forest and the long road to Iroquois territory.
Sullivan Expedition Against the Iroquois Indians, 1779 (White Oak Run)- PLAQUE
Pocono Township, PA · est. 1929
On June 20, 1779, the third day's march ended at a spot the soldiers dubbed Chowder Camp, where General Sullivan is remembered as dining on trout chowder pulled from the mountain streams. The short five-mile advance hints at the rough terrain slowing an army hauling artillery and supplies into the Poconos. Small human details like a general's stream-caught supper survive alongside the grand campaign.
Sullivan Expedition Against the Iroquois Indians, 1779 (Fort Penn)- PLAQUE
Stroudsburg, PA · est. 1929
In the spring of 1779, General George Washington ordered a punishing campaign into the heart of Iroquois country to end frontier raids allied with the British. Here at Fort Penn, the fortified home of Col. Jacob Stroud served as a rendezvous where companies gathered before joining the main army. From this staging ground in the Pocono foothills, men and supplies funneled westward toward the march that would follow.
Sullivan's March
Hamilton Township, PA · est. 1947
Brinker's Mill served as the storehouse and forward supply post for the Sullivan Expedition, the 1779 Continental Army campaign that marched out of Easton on June 18 to strike the Iroquois nations allied with Britain. Ordered by George Washington in response to frontier raids, the expedition aimed to break Iroquois power in the region. This mill helped provision an army bound for one of the Revolution's harshest campaigns.