Sullivan's March
Ulster Township, Bradford County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Gen. John Sullivan's army camped on the Sheshequin Flats below, Aug. 9-10, 1779. The seventh and last overnight stop on the way to Tioga Point.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In August 1779, General John Sullivan led a Continental Army expedition up the Susquehanna Valley, camping on the Sheshequin Flats below this point on the ninth and tenth before pressing on to Tioga Point. This was the seventh and final overnight stop of a hard march into Iroquois country. Sullivan's campaign, ordered by George Washington, aimed to break the power of the Six Nations who had allied with the British on the frontier.
Why it matters
The Sullivan Expedition was a turning point on the Revolution's western front, devastating Iroquois towns and opening the way for later American settlement — a campaign remembered very differently by the Haudenosaunee whose homeland it targeted.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the late summer of 1779, the American Revolution had been grinding on for four years, and much of the hardest fighting on the frontier was happening far from the famous battlefields of the coast. Here in the upper Susquehanna Valley of what is now Pennsylvania, the war had a different shape: a war of raids and reprisals, of burned farms and contested homelands, fought across river flats and forested ridges.
This stretch of the valley sat at the edge of the country of the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), whose towns and cornfields lay to the north and west. Many of those nations had thrown their weight behind the British, and the frontier settlements of Pennsylvania and New York had suffered for it. In response, George Washington ordered a large expedition to march up into that country and break its power.
The army that camped on the Sheshequin Flats below this point in August 1779 was in the middle of exactly that campaign. The soldiers had been pushing up the valley for days, hauling supplies over difficult ground, and this riverside stop was the seventh and last night they would spend on the road before reaching their staging point ahead.
People & events
The march recorded here belonged to General John Sullivan, the New Hampshire lawyer-turned-Continental-officer whom Washington placed in command of the expedition that still bears his name. Sullivan's task was not to fight a single decisive battle but to move a whole army deep into difficult country and carry the war to the towns of the Six Nations.
On the ninth and tenth of August, 1779, that army spread its tents across the broad river flats just below this hill. Picture thousands of men, along with their horses, wagons, and boats, filling a bend in the valley for a night and a day of rest before the final leg. For soldiers used to sleeping rough, a level, well-watered campground beside the river would have been a welcome thing.
The marker fixes this as the seventh and final overnight stop before the army reached Tioga Point ahead. That detail is worth pausing on: it turns an ordinary-looking field into a measured milestone on a long and deliberate advance, one campsite in a chain that a whole army moved through, night by night.
Its place in the American story
The Sullivan Expedition was one of the largest offensive operations the Continental Army mounted during the entire Revolution, and it marked a turning point on the war's western front. By driving into the heartland of the Six Nations, it aimed to end the frontier raids by destroying the towns and food supplies that sustained them.
In military terms it largely succeeded, and it opened the way for the waves of American settlement that would pour into these valleys after the war. That is the story long told on markers like this one — a campaign of national reach, planned at the highest level and carried out across hundreds of miles.
But the same campaign is remembered very differently by the Haudenosaunee, whose homeland it targeted and whose communities bore its destruction. To understand this quiet campsite fully is to hold both truths at once: a strategic American victory, and a lasting wound to the nations who lived here first. A single field can belong to more than one people's history.
If you visit
Stand here and let your eye drop to the river flats below — that low, level ground along the water is the Sheshequin Flats where the army camped. The landscape does the storytelling. You are looking at the kind of open, well-watered bottomland that made a natural stopping place for thousands of people moving through a rugged valley.
Give yourself a moment to imagine the scale. Not a skirmish line, but an entire army at rest: cook fires, picketed horses, tents filling the bend of the river for a night before the last push. The quiet you find here now is the same ground that once held all that motion.
This makes a rewarding stop on a slow drive up the Susquehanna Valley, where the river and the roadside markers together trace the route the expedition followed. Come with the understanding that this is contested ground in memory as well as history, and the pause will mean more.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Plan your visit
NearbyMake a day of it — museums, food, and places to stay near this marker.
Museums & culture
- Tioga Point Museum5.5 mi away
- Sayre Historical Society7.6 mi away
- S.R.A.C. Susquehanna River Archaeological Center9.1 mi away · 343 Broad Street, Waverly, NY
Places to stay
- Comfort Inn7.7 mi away · 2160 Elmira Street, Sayre, PA
- Candlewood Suites8.2 mi away · 2775 North Elmira Street, Sayre, PA
- Hampton Inn Sayre8.5 mi away · 3080 Elmira Street, Sayre, PA
- Econo Lodge8.7 mi away · Spring Street, Sayre, PA
Places data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Hours and details change — call ahead.
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Related people
- · John Sullivan
Related events
- · Sullivan Expedition
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Sullivan Expedition Against the Iroquois Indians, 1779 - Sheshecunnunck (PLAQUE)
Sheshequin Township, PA · est. 1929
In August 1779 General John Sullivan marched his Continental army up the Susquehanna Valley on a campaign to break the power of the Iroquois Confederacy, which had raided frontier settlements as Britain's allies. On the night of August 10 the army made its seventh and final encampment before reaching Teaoga on these river lowlands at Sheshecunnunck. The march was one leg of a systematic expedition that would destroy dozens of Iroquois towns and cornfields.
Teaoga & Queen Esther's Town - PLAQUE
Athens Township, PA · est. 1928
Where the Chemung meets the Susquehanna stood Teaoga, a Iroquois watch post guarding the southern approach to the confederacy's territory, and nearby the Delaware settlement remembered as Queen Esther's Town. The broad river flats were rich grazing land, but in September 1778 — amid the frontier warfare of the Revolution — Colonel Thomas Hartley's expedition swept up the valley and burned both towns. These raids were part of the escalating cycle of retaliation between Continental forces and Britain's Iroquois allies on the Pennsylvania frontier.
Fort Sullivan
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.
Sullivan Expedition Against the Iroquois Indians, 1779 - Teaoga (PLAQUE)
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.