Sullivan's March
Exeter Township, Wyoming County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Gen. John Sullivan's army camped on the lowland on the opposite side of the river Aug. 1-2, 1779. It was the second camp from Fort Wyoming at Wilkes-Barre en route to Tioga.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
During the Revolution's Sullivan Expedition of 1779, General John Sullivan's Continental army moved north up the Susquehanna from Fort Wyoming at Wilkes-Barre toward Tioga. On August 1–2 the troops encamped on the lowland across the river here — the second stop on a grueling march through frontier country. The campaign was Washington's answer to raids on the frontier, aimed at the Iroquois Confederacy allied with the British.
Why it matters
These riverside campsites trace the route of a major Revolutionary War campaign that opened Pennsylvania's northern tier to settlement while shattering Iroquois power in the region.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1779 the Revolutionary War had spread deep into the American interior, and the Susquehanna Valley of northeastern Pennsylvania had become one of its most dangerous frontiers. Isolated farms and small forts stood exposed to raids, and the war here was fought in ambushes and burned fields as much as in set-piece battles.
To the north lay the homelands of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, most of whom had sided with the British. Together with Loyalist forces they mounted attacks that the American command judged too damaging to ignore. The frontier, in the eyes of Washington's army, had to be secured.
The response was one of the war's most ambitious inland campaigns: a march directly into Iroquois country to destroy its capacity to fight. One column set out up the Susquehanna from Fort Wyoming, and its route carried it through this low ground beside the river.
People & events
The army was led by General John Sullivan, a Continental officer entrusted with moving thousands of men, along with their supplies and guns, through rough and often trackless country. Every mile was a logistical struggle, and the march advanced in careful daily stages.
On August 1 and 2, 1779, the troops camped on the lowland across the river from here — the second encampment out from Fort Wyoming at Wilkes-Barre, early in the long push toward Tioga. Two nights in one place hint at the effort of organizing such a force before it pressed onward into more hostile ground.
What lay ahead was a campaign of deliberate destruction: Iroquois towns, orchards, and cornfields were systematically laid waste as the army advanced. The goal was not to hold territory but to break a people's ability to sustain the war — a hard strategy that the settlers of the valley had long felt they needed.
Its place in the American story
This expedition ranks among the largest campaigns the Continental Army ever directed against Native nations, and its effects outlasted the Revolution by generations. In breaking the strength of the Six Nations, it redrew the balance of power across the northern frontier of Pennsylvania and New York.
That opening was quickly filled by American settlers in the years that followed — an expansion counted as a national gain, though it came at a devastating cost to the Iroquois whose homes and harvests were destroyed. To tell this story truthfully is to hold the triumph and the tragedy in the same hand.
A riverside campsite is a modest marker for so large a history. Yet it is these very waypoints that let us follow the campaign as it actually unfolded — not as a line on a map, but as a real army moving night by night through a real valley, carrying the Revolution into country that would never be the same.
If you visit
Look across the river to the lowland where the army made camp, and you'll notice the marker asks you to imagine a place slightly apart from where you stand. That small gap between here and there is worth pausing over; history often happened just across the water, on ground that looks unremarkable today.
There is no grand site to walk here — the reward is the setting itself, the broad river and the flat bottomland that shaped how and where an eighteenth-century army could move. Read the marker slowly and let the geography explain the strategy.
This stop belongs to a string of markers following the 1779 march up the Susquehanna, so it rewards a road trip taken at an unhurried pace. Come willing to reflect on both sides of the story — the frontier settlers who welcomed the campaign and the Iroquois nations who bore its lasting cost.
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
- · John Sullivan
Related events
- · Clinton-Sullivan Campaign of 1779
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Bloody Rock
Wyoming, PA · est. 1962
On the night of July 3, 1778, the day after the Battle of Wyoming, this rock became the scene of one of the Revolution's grim atrocities. Fourteen or more captured American soldiers were killed here, according to tradition by a woman remembered as "Queen Esther," though her identity has never been certain. The battle and its aftermath spread terror through the Susquehanna frontier and hardened the war on the Pennsylvania borderlands.
Battle of Wyoming
Wyoming, PA · est. 1952
On July 3, 1778, the Revolution reached the Susquehanna frontier in one of its bloodiest backcountry episodes. A small force of about 300 patriots under Colonel Zebulon Butler marched out to meet a much larger column of British, Loyalists, and allied Iroquois led by Major John Butler. The patriots were routed, many captives were killed, and terrified survivors fled to the refuge of Forty Fort.
Sullivan's March
Tunkhannock, PA · est. 1947
In the summer of 1779, General John Sullivan led thousands of Continental soldiers up the Susquehanna Valley in a scorched-earth campaign ordered by George Washington against the Iroquois Confederacy, allies of the British. On August 3, that army made its third camp above Fort Wyoming here by the river as it pushed north toward Tioga. The march devastated Iroquois towns and croplands, breaking the power of the Six Nations on the New York–Pennsylvania frontier.
Sullivan Expedition Against the Iroquois Indians, 1779 - Tunkhannock (PLAQUE)
Tunkhannock, PA · est. 1929
In the summer of 1779, at the height of the American Revolution, General John Sullivan led a punishing campaign up the Susquehanna Valley against the Iroquois nations allied with the British. This plaque marks a waypoint on that march from Wyoming to Teaoga, where on August 3 the army camped on the lowlands between here and the river. The relentless expedition burned Iroquois towns and crops, breaking the military power of the Six Nations in the region.