Search Markers

Straban Township, PA

East of Gettysburg this marker notes where the 10th New York Cavalry — nicknamed the "Porter Guard" — was engaged on the afternoon and evening of July 2nd, 1863. As part of the Cavalry Corps' Second Division, the regiment operated on the army's flank, the kind of screening and skirmishing that kept commanders informed and protected the infantry's vulnerable edges. The fighting around Gettysburg raged for three days before Lee's army withdrew back toward Virginia.

Frederick County, MD

In the summer heat of the Civil War, Confederate forces pushed north through Maryland in a bold drive aimed at the lightly defended Union capital. Along the Monocacy River outside Frederick, outnumbered Union troops—among them the 10th Vermont Infantry—made a hard stand to slow that advance. Though the defenders were eventually forced from the field, the day they bought gave Washington time to rush reinforcements into its fortifications. Vermont later raised this monument to mark exactly where its sons stood in the fighting.

Spotsylvania County, VA

This granite marker stands on the Chancellorsville battlefield in Spotsylvania County, where on May 3, 1863, Union and Confederate forces clashed in some of the fiercest fighting of the Civil War. The 114th Pennsylvania Volunteers — better known as Collis's Zouaves for their colorful French-inspired uniforms — held this line as the battle reached its bloody climax. The monument names the three officers and thirty-five enlisted men who fell here that single day, preserving their sacrifice on the very ground where they stood.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument honors the 119th New York Infantry, part of the Second Brigade, Third Division of the Eleventh Corps, at its position on July 1, 1863 — the opening day of the Battle of Gettysburg. The regiment was among the Union troops posted on the open plain north of town who met the Confederate advance head-on before being forced back through the streets to Cemetery Hill. The date carved here fixes the moment when the fighting on this ground was fiercest.

Abilene, TX

Established in 1940, Camp Barkeley grew into one of the nation's largest World War II training bases, at its peak housing more than twice the population of nearby Abilene. The 12th Armored Division arrived in November 1943, drilling day and night with tanks, armored infantry, and field artillery until it qualified for combat and shipped to Europe in September 1944. Nicknamed the 'Hellcats' and dubbed the 'Mystery Division' in General Patton's drive to the Rhine, the division earned more than 800 battle decorations before the camp was deactivated in 1945.

Canadian, TX

Long before highways crossed the Texas Panhandle, a single great cottonwood served as a guiding landmark for pioneers traveling the military and stage road nearby between 1870 and 1890. More than a century old and measuring 21 feet around, the tree stood as a living waypoint in an open landscape with few fixed markers.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument traces the movements of the 147th Pennsylvania Infantry during the Battle of Gettysburg. On the night of July 1, 1863, the regiment lay on the northern slope of Little Round Top, holding the extreme left of the Union army; before dawn on July 2 it marched to Culp's Hill, waited in reserve, and then moved back toward the left with its brigade as the fighting spread. The marker records the regiment's shifting role across the battlefield's second day.

Cumberland Township, PA

During the second and third days at Gettysburg, the William Bliss farm sat in the deadly open ground between the two armies, its sturdy barn a nest for Confederate sharpshooters who harassed the Union line. On the morning of July 3, 1863, men of the 14th Connecticut Volunteers seized the buildings and, on orders from their division commander, burned both barn and house so they could no longer shelter enemy marksmen. The field was cleared only hours before Pickett's Charge swept toward the Union center nearby.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument marks the most advanced westward line held by the 150th Pennsylvania Infantry on July 1, 1863, near the unfinished railroad cut on the fields northwest of Gettysburg. As Confederate assaults came from both the north and the west, the regiment repeatedly changed front and its right wing charged toward the cut, fighting a series of stubborn stands even as it was slowly driven back toward town. It was combat of the most exhausting kind — men wheeling to face attacks from two directions at once.

Spotsylvania County, VA

On the evening of May 2, 1863, Stonewall Jackson's surprise flank attack rolled up the Union 11th Corps near Chancellorsville. The 154th New York — nicknamed "The Hardtack Regiment" — was among the units thrown into the breach, helping anchor the hastily formed Buschbeck Line near Dowdall's Tavern as the Confederate assault crashed through the Federal right. Their stand bought precious time even as the larger battle turned into one of Robert E. Lee's most celebrated victories. This monument honors the New Yorkers who held that fragile line in the gathering dusk.

Cumberland Township, PA

Erected by its own survivors, this monument remembers the men of the 157th New York Volunteers who fell at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863. That day the regiment was thrown into the fighting north of town, where it was caught in a punishing crossfire and suffered severe losses in a matter of minutes before the Union line gave way. Veterans returning years later raised this stone to the comrades who did not come home.

Spotsylvania County, VA

This monument honors the 15th New Jersey Volunteer Infantry Regiment, a Union unit that fought in the dense, fire-swept woods of Spotsylvania County during the Civil War. Though the inscription marks action on May 3rd, the regiment became famous for the savage close-quarters fighting around the "Bloody Angle" at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House in May 1864, where Federal and Confederate troops grappled hand-to-hand for nearly a full day. Led for much of its service by Colonel William H. Penrose, the regiment suffered some of the heaviest losses of any New Jersey unit in the war.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument marks where the 15th New York Independent Battery of Light Artillery went into action on July 3, 1863, the climactic day at Gettysburg. Ordered early to the front and posted on the left of the 5th Massachusetts Battery, the New Yorkers were directed by Major General Winfield Scott Hancock to open on the Confederate guns with solid shot and shell. Their fire helped answer the great artillery bombardment that preceded Pickett's Charge.

Corsicana, TX

When the Civil War came, Navarro County raised its own fighting men, including Companies E and G of the 15th Texas Infantry, mustered in 1862 under Captains Joshua Long Halbert and Clinton Fouty. Assigned to the Trans-Mississippi theater, they fought across Arkansas, Louisiana, and Indian Territory, seeing hard combat at Bayou Bourbeau and through the Red River Campaign at Mansfield, Pleasant Hill, Mansura, and Yellow Bayou. The survivors began the long journey home in early 1865 and were discharged that spring.

Philadelphia, PA

This towering steel barrel once formed the center gun of Turret 1 aboard the USS New Jersey, an Iowa-class battleship that stands today as a museum ship on the Camden waterfront across from Philadelphia. Each of these 16-inch guns could hurl a shell weighing as much as a small car more than 20 miles, and this one spoke in two very different wars — bombarding enemy positions in the Pacific during World War II, then again off the Korean coast a decade later. A single artifact like this collapses the distance between the factory floor of American industrial power and the far shores where that power was felt.

San Francisco, CA

This unassuming address in San Francisco's South Park neighborhood — the leafy oval that anchored the city's original startup district — is where both Twitter and Instagram were born. Odeo, the podcasting company that pivoted into Twitter in 2006, worked from South Park, and Instagram launched nearby in 2010 before its record-setting acquisition. The tiny park sits at the historic heart of the SoMa tech scene.

Cumberland Township, PA

This marker tells the hard story of the 16th Maine Infantry on July 1, 1863. Ordered to hold a position at all costs to cover the retreat of the rest of the First Corps, the small regiment was overwhelmed and its commander, Colonel Charles W. Tilden, was captured along with most of the survivors; command of what remained passed to a captain. The 16th Maine's sacrifice is one of the battle's most poignant examples of a unit spent almost to nothing so that a larger force could escape.

Riviera, TX

In 1766, amid rumors that the English meant to encroach on Spanish territory, the Viceroy of New Spain ordered Diego Ortiz Parrilla — a veteran of Spain's wars against the Moors — to survey the Texas Gulf Coast and expel any intruders. Setting out from San Juan Bautista on the Rio Grande, his expedition gave the first detailed descriptions of Texas's offshore islands and fixed the name Corpus Christi Bay still used today. Battling torrential rains and floods, Parrilla gathered vital intelligence on the coast and its Native peoples as far north as Trinity Bay, helping lay to rest the fear of English intrusion.

Abington Township, PA · est. 2023

In the tense December of 1777, General Sir William Howe marched British and Hessian troops out of occupied Philadelphia hoping to smash the Continental Army once and for all. Over several days of skirmishing along the heights of Edge Hill, Washington's soldiers held their entrenched ground and refused to be dislodged. Unable to force a decisive battle, Howe pulled back to the city while Washington led his army onward to the hard winter that awaited at Valley Forge.

Pembroke, NH

This weathered stone is an early milestone, cut in 1793 and marking the distances along the road through Pembroke, New Hampshire — the abbreviations point travelers so many miles to Concord and other towns. In the young republic, before signposts and paved highways, carved stone mileposts guided riders, stagecoaches, and post carriers across New England. Each one was a small piece of public infrastructure, often paid for locally, that made overland travel and mail delivery reliable. Two centuries later it still stands where the road once ran.

Nacogdoches, TX

In 1796 the French-born Spanish militia captain Bernardo D'Ortolan settled a rancho along the storied El Camino Real near Nacogdoches, in the turbulent borderland where Spanish, French, Anglo, and Native worlds met. An Indian interpreter and veteran of frontier expeditions, D'Ortolan lived here with his sons and enslaved people, among them Marie Juana, who in 1808 won the governor's permission to buy her eldest son's freedom over D'Ortolan's objection. Swept up in the revolts that shook Spanish Texas, he left his emancipated slave Raphael in charge before being forced out in 1813.

New Orleans, LA · est. 2010

On August 29, 2005, as Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the federal floodwall along the vital 17th Street Canal gave way at this spot, unleashing floodwaters that killed hundreds. It was one of some fifty failures in the region's flood-protection system that day. A 2008 federal court laid the collapse at the feet of the Army Corps of Engineers, even as a 1928 law shielded the agency from financial liability.

Bulloch County, GA

Organized in 1804 by the Rev. Lewis Mayers, New Hope was Bulloch County's second Methodist church, gathered on the young Georgia frontier by a handful of trustees and lay leaders. Its members kept the Burke and Ohoopee Circuit records — the oldest in South Georgia — and sent several of their own into the Methodist itinerant ministry. Two centuries on, the congregation still carries that early leadership forward.

Edwardsville, IL

Built in 1820, just two years after Illinois entered the Union, this two-story Federal-style house rose on what was then the western frontier of the young republic. Constructed of native materials by skilled craftsmen, it reflected the aspirations of the region's emerging upper class in a place only recently opened to American settlement. Its refined proportions show how quickly eastern architectural fashions followed settlers into the Illinois country.

City of Rochester, NY

This marker stands at the site of an 1822 lighthouse near the mouth of the Genesee River, where it empties into Lake Ontario. Long before the beacon rose, the spot was a Native American camping ground and, in 1792, the home of the William Hincher family, among the earliest settlers in what would become Rochester. As Great Lakes shipping grew in the early 19th century, lighthouses like this one guided vessels safely to port. The structure was restored by the Lighthouse Historical Society in 1984.

Wabash, IN

In October 1826, the Potawatomi and Miami nations met with United States commissioners and signed treaties ceding lands north of the Wabash River. Written into the agreements were grants of land to fund a canal and the Michigan Road — the very infrastructure that would soon carry settlers deep into northern Indiana. The cessions opened a region long held by Native peoples, accelerating both American expansion and the eventual removal of these nations.

Lake County, IL

Captain Daniel Wright arrived in 1834 as the first settler in what became Lake County, Illinois, planting a homestead on land still shared with Native peoples and open prairie. The Lake County Historical Society placed this marker in 1909 to honor the man remembered as the county's founding pioneer. His arrival opened a district that would fill rapidly with farms and towns.

Gonzales, TX

This Gonzales lot was the 1834 home of Almaron Dickinson and his wife Susanna. It was to this house that Susanna returned on March 13, 1836, carrying her infant daughter and the terrible news of the Alamo's fall a week earlier—the death of its defenders, among them many men from Gonzales and her own young husband. Sent out by Santa Anna as a living warning, she instead helped rally Texian resolve.

Gonzales County, TX

Raids were a constant fear in DeWitt's Colony after its 1825 founding, and Green DeWitt built a fort at Gonzales and begged Mexican authorities for troops and a cannon. In 1835 a party of thirteen French and Mexican traders bound from Natchitoches to Mexico camped at Sandies Water Hole, where a large force—believed to be Comanche—fell upon them. The fight lasted hours and left all thirteen dead, and with no help forthcoming from the Mexican government, such attacks continued at the site into Texas statehood.

Concord, MA

On April 19, 1775, at Concord's North Bridge over the Concord River, colonial militia and the advancing British regulars exchanged the volleys that opened the American Revolution. Ordered by their commanders to hold, the assembled minutemen returned fire when the British fired first, and a British soldier fell here — among the earliest to die in the war. This granite obelisk, raised in 1836, marks the ground where organized armed resistance to the Crown began, immortalized soon after as 'the shot heard round the world.'

Houston, TX

In 1840 the young City of Houston bought five acres from the Allen brothers to create its first municipal cemetery, then divided it by ordinance into a potter's field, a segregated "negroes burying ground," a commons, and family plots sold to the highest bidder. For some forty years it was the city's only cemetery, receiving citizens of the Republic of Texas, Civil War veterans, and victims of Houston's recurring yellow fever epidemics. Later neglected and built over by Jefferson Davis Hospital in 1924, it still holds thousands of graves though almost nothing marks them above ground.

Millstadt, IL

This log cabin dates to the 1840s, the pioneer generation that cleared and settled the prairies and river bottoms of southern Illinois. Hand-hewn log dwellings were the first permanent homes of families pushing west into the Old Northwest, raised from local timber before sawmills and rail reached the countryside. Its survival preserves the everyday texture of frontier settlement.

Corinth, TX

Carved from Fannin County when Texas created 31 new counties in 1846, Denton County spent a decade searching for a workable seat of government. After Pinckneyville, the seat moved in 1848 to the first Alton — a ridge-top town near present Corinth whose lone resident, William Creth Baines, used his home as the courthouse — but a dry well forced a move to Old Alton in 1851. Only in 1857 did voters settle the seat at a central site they named Denton.

Bainbridge Island, WA

Placed by the Daughters of the American Revolution, this marker recalls an Independence Day celebration held on this Bainbridge Island site on July 4, 1861—the 85th anniversary of American independence. Held in the young Washington Territory as the nation itself edged toward civil war, it shows how far-flung pioneer settlements carried the rituals of patriotism to the Pacific shore.

Fort Worth, TX

On July 4, 1869, a band of eleven Native raiders gathered horses around Fort Worth and rode northwest, pursued by a posse of Tarrant County men into Parker County. Along the way settlers' homes were raided and two travelers killed before the raiders slipped away on the night of July 5th, abandoning most of the stock. Such raids were a recurring feature of the North Texas frontier from the late 1850s until 1875.

Calf Creek vicinity, TX

Near Calf Creek in 1874 or 1875, a band of eighteen Indians ambushed W.B. Brown and two companions, seizing horses, bedrolls, and provisions but letting the men escape with their lives. The episode belongs to the last years of the Southern Plains wars, when Native peoples driven off their hunting ranges struck at settlers' supplies as small victories in a losing struggle. It preserves the texture of frontier conflict in West-Central Texas at the close of the open range.

Galveston, TX

On the Strand — Galveston's "Wall Street of the Southwest" — attorney and future judge Thomas Jefferson League began this three-story commercial block in 1871, on the very spot where an 1869 arson fire had swept a mile-wide swath. Fronted with decorative cast iron and a galvanized cornice, it housed clothiers, booksellers, and cotton factors, and later sheltered the Levy family's hardware business for half a century.

Brackettville, TX

By 1873 Fort Clark had grown to regimental size, prompting the Army to build six single-story infantry barracks and three two-story cavalry barracks. This coursed-limestone building housed bunks for sixty-four soldiers around a central gun rack, facing the officers' quarters across the parade field. Today it is the best-surviving example at Fort Clark and one of only a handful of Indian Wars-era barracks left standing at any post in the nation.

Fairfield, TX

Built in 1881 as Freestone County's third jail, this sturdy two-story building rose on the footprint of an 1857 predecessor, its brick fired from local clay and partly recycled from the earlier structure. Behind eighteen-inch walls it held two cells and quarters for the jailer, later becoming a family residence and, from 1966, a county museum. A recent restoration returned it to its 1880s appearance.

Sabine Pass, TX

By October 1886, Sabine Pass was Jefferson County's second-largest town, buoyed by a new rail line and dreams of becoming a major Gulf port. On October 12—just two months after a hurricane had wiped out Indianola down the coast—100-mile-per-hour winds and a sudden storm surge swept homes off their foundations, carrying people and animals miles inland and killing eighty-six residents; only two of seventy-seven houses survived. Neighboring towns rushed boats and aid, and the legislature granted tax relief, but the disaster hastened the port's long decline.

Brackettville, TX

When Fort Clark's soldiers first cooked over open fires along Las Moras Creek, mess was a rough affair, but in 1886 the Army built nine sturdy limestone kitchens and mess halls, one for each company of enlisted men. This surviving building, quarried from local stone with timber lintels and twin chimneys for cooking and heat, later served as day rooms, offices, and supply storage. It stands as one of eight that remain from a frontier post guarding the Texas–Mexico borderlands.

Waxahachie, TX

Raised in 1889 for Waxahachie Lodge No. 90, this three-story brick building wears a tin cornice stamped with Masonic emblems. Retail stores rented the ground floor and professionals the second, while the Masons met in the third-story hall until 1926. After passing through private hands, it was bought in 1975 by the Ellis County Historical Museum and Art Gallery, giving the old lodge a second life as a keeper of local history.

Henrietta, TX

Erected in 1890 by the Pauly Jail Building and Manufacturing Company of St. Louis, this was Clay County's third jail and, in the fashion of the day, included living quarters so a lawman and his family could reside on site. The two-story brick structure shows off corbelled brick, rusticated stone, and pressed metal, and was stuccoed in 1929. It served the county until 1973.

Columbus, TX

In July 1890, the small Texas town of Columbus threw itself a party. Some 3,000 people gathered for a barbecue in a grove north of town, then marched behind a brass band to the square where the Caledonia Masonic Lodge laid the cornerstone of a new Colorado County Courthouse. The day ended with a grand ball at the Stafford Opera House, and the courthouse itself was finished the following February.

Victoria, TX

Victoria's public square traces to Martín de León's 1824 townsite of Guadalupe Victoria, and by 1849 the county raised its first courthouse there. In 1892 acclaimed architect J. Riely Gordon designed a Romanesque Revival successor, adapted to the Texas heat with a light-filled central atrium; contractors Martin, Byrne & Johnston completed it after Gordon left the project. Saved by residents in the 1960s and restored near the turn of the 21st century, it stands as a monument to Texas courthouse architecture.

Johnson City, TX

When the Blanco County seat moved to Johnson City, prisoners were first held in a damp basement, prompting the commissioners court to order a proper jail in 1893. Completed the next year, the limestone lockup was raised by Kansas-trained rock mason J. E. L. 'Kergie' Dildine. It survived an 1897 jailbreak and stayed in service for generations, adapted over time to meet state standards.

Forney, TX

On October 5, 1899, Edward H. R. Green set out from Terrell for Dallas in a newly bought "St. Louis" automobile, joined by its maker, George B. Dorris. The thirty-mile trip took five and a half hours and included a breakdown in Forney patched up by a local blacksmith. When the pair rolled into Dallas to a cheering crowd, newspapers hailed it as a first for Texas.

Galveston, TX

On September 8, 1900, a hurricane swept over low-lying Galveston with almost no warning, drowning the island's streets and killing thousands in what remains the deadliest natural disaster in United States history. David W. Moore's bronze sculpture, installed in 2000 on the centennial, stands to the memory of the many thousands of Galvestonians lost and to those who rebuilt. The catastrophe drove the city to raise its grade and construct the great seawall, feats of engineering meant to ensure such loss would never recur.

Scranton, PA · est. 2002

In May 1902, roughly 150,000 anthracite miners walked off the job across northeastern Pennsylvania, staying out for six months over union recognition, better pay, and shorter hours. With the nation's coal supply threatened, President Theodore Roosevelt convened the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission, which held hearings at the Lackawanna County Courthouse in Scranton and granted several of the miners' demands in 1903.

Shenandoah, PA · est. 2002

In the spring of 1902, some 150,000 anthracite miners across Pennsylvania's hard-coal region laid down their tools and stayed out for six long months, demanding higher pay, shorter hours, and recognition of their union. When thousands of strikers clashed with authorities at Shenandoah that July, the National Guard occupied the town — but the crisis also drew President Theodore Roosevelt into the dispute, prompting him to appoint an Anthracite Coal Commission. It was the first time a president intervened as a neutral arbiter rather than siding automatically with the owners.

Gail, TX

When Texas courts threw open certain lands to public claim in 1902, the cowboys and nesters of Borden County raced one another to the county clerk's filing window. Ranchers sent hands wearing blue armbands to secure the range they already used; homesteaders wore red and rushed for the same acres. For three days before each deadline the two sides brawled bare-knuckled at the window, until Sheriff W.K. Clark disarmed everyone to head off bloodshed—and in the end, drought starved the nesters out.

Durham, NH

This dedication rock carries the motto of the University of New Hampshire's Class of 1906 — "No class ever loved its college more. No class ever did more for its college" — drawn from the conclusion of the class will read by John D. Clark. It marks the moment a graduating class formalized its devotion to the young college in Durham.

Somerville, TX

Hood's Texas Brigade was among the most celebrated Confederate commands, and after the Civil War its survivors kept a bond that outlasted the fighting. In June 1906 the little town of Somerville hosted the brigade association's annual reunion, honoring 74 aging veterans with speeches, a baseball game, and a grand ball across two summer days. Organized locally by R. A. Brantley, Sr. and his daughter, it was one link in a chain of reunions that continued until 1934.

Comfort, TX

Built in 1907 for Alex Brinkmann, this handsome stone building housed the Comfort State Bank until 1960, its walls hand-cut by local stonemason Richard Doebbler. Designed in a modified Richardsonian Romanesque style, it boasts polished red granite columns, a round-headed window, a corner entrance, and a blind arcade in its tower. After the bank moved on, the structure served as the Comfort Public Library from 1961 to 1982.

Pueblo, CO

This cornerstone, dated 1908 and bearing the Latin motto 'mens sana in corpore sano'—'a sound mind in a sound body'—marks an early-20th-century Pueblo institution, most likely a school or gymnasium. The phrase was a favorite ideal of the era's education and physical-culture movements. A later line records a donation from Dave Mutz, Class of 1964.

Stowe Township, PA

On July 14, 1909, largely immigrant unskilled laborers walked off their jobs at the Pressed Steel Car Company, launching one of the era's most violent industrial confrontations. Tension among strikers, replacement workers, and state police boiled over into a riot on August 22 that left eleven men dead near this footbridge. The strikers drew support from the Industrial Workers of the World.

Bethlehem, PA · est. 2012

In February 1910, more than 9,000 workers walked off the job at Bethlehem Steel, protesting low wages, forced overtime, and brutal conditions in one of America's industrial giants. The confrontation turned deadly when a striker was shot and killed amid the unrest. The strike failed to win immediate demands, but the federal investigation that followed confirmed the workers' grievances and helped push the steel industry toward reform.

Shoshone County, ID

Placed by Ed Pulaski in 1923, this memorial names men — among them August Berger, Joe Ferre, Harry Hansen, William Learmouth, and Richard Woods, along with an unidentified man — who died fighting fire in service of their country, likened here to the fallen of Flanders. Pulaski was the ranger famed for saving most of his crew in a mine tunnel during the Great Fire of 1910, the "Big Burn" that consumed some three million acres across Idaho and Montana.

Dallas, TX

As Jim Crow tightened its grip after Reconstruction, the threat and reality of lynching enforced the racial order even in cities. On March 3, 1910, a mob stormed the Dallas County courthouse, seized 60-year-old Allen Brooks from a pretrial hearing, threw him from a second-floor window, and dragged him down Main Street to hang him near the Elks Arch before a crowd estimated at 5,000. Though many called for a grand jury, no one was ever held accountable.

Marble Falls, TX

Marble Falls established its post office in 1884, and in 1910 postmaster William P. Cochran erected this poured-concrete building and leased it to the federal government. It served as the town's postal facility until about 1950, its stone parapet and detailed cornice reflecting the modest civic architecture of a growing Hill Country town. The building survives as a tangible link to the everyday infrastructure that bound rural Texans to the wider nation.