Historic Markers in Pennsylvania

Shirleysburg, PA · est. 1947

Built in 1755–56 by the frontier trader and Indian agent George Croghan, Fort Shirley began as a stockade and grew into a key link in the chain of forts guarding Pennsylvania's frontier west of the Susquehanna River during the French and Indian War. In 1756 it served as the base for Colonel John Armstrong's expedition against the Delaware village of Kittanning. Its role reflected the desperate effort to defend backcountry settlers from raids during that conflict.

Shirleysburg, PA · est. 1926

This knoll carried Fort Shirley, one of the frontier forts raised in 1756 during the French and Indian War, built by the noted Indian trader and agent George Croghan on the site of his earlier trading post at Aughwick. Two years before, in 1754, Croghan's post here hosted a council in which interpreter Conrad Weiser met the Iroquois "Half King" Tanacharison and chiefs of the Shawnee and Delaware. The place thus joined the twin frontier worlds of diplomacy and defense.

Huntingdon, PA · est. 1955

Fort Standing Stone once guarded this bend of the Juniata River where Stone Creek joins it, throwing up a stockade against raids on the exposed frontier. In July 1778, at the height of the Revolutionary War, Continental troops and militia were ordered here as part of a broader plan to defend the backcountry from attacks. The old fort stood a short distance south of this marker; the settlement it protected grew into Huntingdon.

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.

Athens, PA · est. 1929

During the summer of 1779, General John Sullivan's army built Fort Sullivan here as a supply base for its campaign against the Iroquois. In mid-August, soldiers killed in a skirmish downriver at Chemung were carried back and buried within the fort's walls. The location was remembered by a veteran, Solomon Talada, who settled in Athens after the war, and confirmed generations later when skeletons were unearthed before 1839.

Union Township, PA · est. 1999

As the French and Indian War set the Pennsylvania frontier ablaze in the mid-1750s, settlers threw up fortified blockhouses to shelter their scattered farms. Fort Swatara, first built by Peter Hedrick in 1755 and strengthened by Capt. Frederick Smith in 1756, guarded the strategic Swatara Gap against raids and gave frontier families a place of refuge in a dangerous season.

Franklin, PA

By 1760 the British had won the struggle for the Ohio Country, and they raised Fort Venango where French Creek meets the Allegheny River—a strategic river junction the French had earlier fortified. Its garrison held the frontier only briefly. In 1763, as Pontiac's War swept the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley, Native warriors overwhelmed the post and burned it, one of a string of British forts that fell in that coordinated uprising.

St. Thomas Township, PA · est. 1930

Fort Waddell was one of a line of frontier defenses raised to protect the settlers of old Cumberland County during the dangerous years of the French and Indian War. It stood on the plantation of Thomas Waddell, part of a chain of posts running from Fort Davis to Shippensburg. These small forts offered refuge to scattered farm families amid frontier raids.

St. Thomas Township, PA · est. 1947

General Edward Braddock's crushing defeat near the Monongahela in 1755 tore open the Pennsylvania frontier, and settlers answered by building a chain of small stockaded forts as places of refuge. Fort Wadell was one link in that improvised line, standing ready when raiding parties struck the scattered farms of the Cumberland Valley. These were homemade defenses, thrown together by the very families they protected.

Scott Township, PA · est. 1948

In 1778 the frontier scout Moses Van Campen raised a stockade fort along Fishing Creek to shield local families from the raids that swept this valley during the Revolution. Attacked at least once, it served as one of the refuges that let settlement cling to the Susquehanna country through years of border warfare. Van Campen became a legendary figure in the region, remembered for his exploits as a scout and Indian fighter.

Wilkes-Barre, PA · est. 1947

Pennsylvania built Fort Wyoming in 1771 to press its claim in the Wyoming Valley, only to have it seized by the Connecticut settlers it was meant to check. Rebuilt in 1778, it served the following year as a mustering point for General John Sullivan's expedition against the Iroquois during the Revolution. The garrison held until 1784, when Continental and Pennsylvania troops withdrew and the works were destroyed.

Millcreek Township, PA · est. 1947

Half a mile north stands Fort Zeller, reckoned the oldest surviving fort in Pennsylvania. It was built in 1723 by Palatine German pioneers who had migrated from New York's Schoharie Valley to settle the Tulpehocken country, and rebuilt in 1745. In dangerous years it served as a fortified refuge for frontier families during clashes with Native peoples.

Forty Fort, PA · est. 1947

Forty Fort took its name from the forty Connecticut pioneers who came to the Wyoming Valley in 1769 and began the stockade the next year. It is remembered above all for the aftermath of July 3, 1778, when its surrender to a British, Loyalist, and Native force under Major John Butler was followed by the Wyoming Massacre, one of the war's bloodiest frontier episodes. The killing of settlers and prisoners shocked the young nation and hardened resolve against the Iroquois allies of the Crown.

Mifflinburg, PA · est. 1947

A mill has stood near this spot since 1771, when Fought's Mill first turned grain for the settlers of Buffalo Valley. During the Revolution, the sturdy mill doubled as a place of refuge when frontier raids threatened the scattered farms of the region. It was also here, on November 3, 1776, that Buffalo Valley held its first election under Pennsylvania's new revolutionary state constitution.

Pittsburgh, PA · est. 1997

In the industrial boomtown of Pittsburgh, delegates gathered at Turner Hall on November 15, 1881, to build a federation of trade unions that would soon be known as the American Federation of Labor. Under leaders who insisted on organizing skilled workers by craft, the AFL grew into the nation's largest labor federation and a durable force in American working life. In 1955 it merged with its industrial-union rival to form the AFL-CIO that endures today.

Pittsburgh, PA · est. 1997

As the Great Depression reshaped American industry, thirty-four international unions sent delegates to Pittsburgh in November 1938 for the first convention of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Breaking from the older craft-based model, the CIO organized entire industries—steel, autos, rubber—bringing millions of mass-production workers into the labor movement. Pittsburgh's own Philip Murray led the organization as president from 1940 to 1952.

Pittsburgh, PA · est. 1999

On February 4, 1896, sixteen delegates gathered at Moorheads Hall on this site to form the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental, and Reinforcing Iron Workers. Meeting in Pittsburgh, the heart of America's steel and bridge-building boom, they organized to win better wages and, above all, safer conditions in one of the era's most dangerous trades. By its centennial in 1996 the union counted some 140,000 members.

Foxburg, PA

In 1887 Joseph M. Fox made land available to the newly formed Foxburg Golf Club and served as its first president, laying out a course that expanded from five holes to nine the following year. The club leased the ground until the Foxburg Country Club bought it outright in 1924. It endures today as the oldest golf course in continuous use in the United States.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1992

In the decades before and after the Civil War, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was among the most widely read and widely heard Black voices in America—a poet, novelist, and traveling lecturer who took the abolitionist and, later, equal-rights cause to audiences across the country. From this Philadelphia home she wrote and organized, insisting that education was the surest road to advancement for Black Americans. Her work bridged the antislavery struggle and the reform movements of the later 19th century.

Homestead, PA · est. 2003

When Frances Perkins came to Homestead in July 1933 as the nation's first female cabinet secretary, local officials tried to silence her — barring her from meeting aggrieved steelworkers in a nearby park. Undaunted, the U.S. Secretary of Labor simply moved the gathering onto federal ground at the local post office, where free speech could not be denied. As the architect of much of the New Deal, including Social Security and wage-and-hour laws, Perkins served longer than any labor secretary in history.

Williamsport, PA · est. 2024

Raised in Williamsport, Frances Tipton Hunter became one of the most beloved commercial illustrators of the mid-20th century. Her warm, sentimental cover art of children and their pets graced The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, and other national magazines during the golden age of American illustration. She also lent her brush to advertisements, calendars, puzzles, and the popular Little Busybodies paper dolls.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1992

In the early 1800s, Philadelphia was a center of American musical life, and Francis Johnson stood at its heart as a celebrated composer, bandleader, and virtuoso performer. Hailed in his day as a master of music, he led popular ensembles, played for the city's cavalry troop, and toured widely at a time when few Black musicians reached such prominence. His compositions and performances shaped the sound of early American concert and dance music.

Wilkinsburg, PA · est. 1990

In a Wilkinsburg garage around 1919 and 1920, Westinghouse engineer Frank Conrad tinkered with an amateur wireless station, 8XK, and began sending out music and talk to fellow hobbyists. Those experiments proved there was a public eager to listen, and they led directly to the launch of KDKA and the birth of commercial broadcasting. Over a 37-year career Conrad amassed more than 200 patents.

Pittsburgh, PA · est. 2004

Frank E. Bolden was one of the first two African American war correspondents accredited by the U.S. Army during World War II. Reporting from India, Burma, and China, he chronicled the service of the "Buffalo Soldiers" and the celebrated Tuskegee Airmen for readers back home. He later became city editor of the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the nation's most influential Black newspapers.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2012

Born in Philadelphia in 1839, Frank Furness became one of the most original architects of Gilded Age America, designing muscular, unmistakable buildings that reveled in the raw industrial materials of his age. His masterpieces include the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the University of Pennsylvania library. Trained under Richard Morris Hunt and serving as mentor to a young Louis Sullivan, Furness helped forge a lineage that led toward a genuinely American modern architecture.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2002

Frank Gasparro, born and trained in classical art in Philadelphia, joined the U.S. Mint as a junior engraver in 1942 and rose to become its 10th Chief Engraver in 1965. His designs are among the most widely handled art in America: the reverse of the Lincoln penny, and, with Gilroy Roberts, the Kennedy half-dollar. He also shaped the Eisenhower and Susan B. Anthony dollars, among many other coins and medals.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2010

Frank N. Piasecki was an aviation pioneer who flew the second successful helicopter in the United States and invented the world's first tandem-rotor helicopter, making rotorcraft genuinely practical in the 1940s. The Philadelphia company he founded here evolved into a division of Boeing and a world leader in helicopter production, while his later firm kept pushing the frontier of advanced rotorcraft. He received the National Medal of Technology in 1986.

Pennsburg, PA · est. 1991

Frank N.D. Buchman was born in this Montgomery County town and ordained a Lutheran minister in 1902 before turning to a life of moral and spiritual crusading. In 1921 he founded the Oxford Group, and in 1938 he launched Moral Re-Armament, a worldwide movement urging personal change as the path to peace among nations. Twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, he was honored by governments around the globe.

Chambersburg, PA · est. 1982

Formed from Cumberland County in 1784 and named for Benjamin Franklin, this county grew up in the Cumberland Valley along the routes leading south and west. Its seat, Chambersburg, was laid out in 1764, and the limestone waters of Falling Spring made it a noted trout stream. The county is also the birthplace of James Buchanan, the nation's fifteenth president.

Frankstown Township, PA · est. 1947

Long before European towns rose here, this was the site of Assunepachla, a Delaware and Shawnee village standing before 1748. By 1734 the trader Frank Stevens had established a fur post at the spot, drawing on the Indian trade that laced the region. The Kittanning Path, a major Indian route across the Allegheny ridges, ran through here, making Frankstown a crossroads of trade and travel.

Morris Township, PA · est. 1949

Long before roads followed these valleys, Native travelers laid out the Frankstown Path, a major overland route threading the ridges of central Pennsylvania along the Frankstown Branch of the Juniata River. Where it met the older Warriors Path near Water Street, the very bed of the river served as a natural gateway through Tussey Mountain. These trails were the interstate highways of their day, carrying people, goods, and diplomacy across the Appalachian barrier.

Wilkes-Barre, PA · est. 2001

Born in the coal city of Wilkes-Barre, Franz Kline became a leading figure of Abstract Expressionism, the movement that made New York the center of the postwar art world. He is best known for his large black-and-white canvases of the 1950s, whose slashing, architectural strokes he tied to the stark industrial landscape of his native anthracite region, naming works "Lehigh," "Luzerne," and "Pittston." Through such paintings Kline helped win international recognition for a distinctly American style of abstraction.

Bedford, PA · est. 1952

As General Forbes's army pushed toward the Ohio in 1758, frontier settlements sprang up in its wake. Here John Fraser and his wife established an inn and trading post that same year, feeding officers at nearby Fort Raystown, the outpost that grew into Bedford. Fraser was no ordinary tavernkeeper—he had served as a guide and interpreter for a young Colonel George Washington in the tense years before the war.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1991

On this spot stood a tavern kept by Samuel Fraunces, who had run a celebrated establishment in New York before following the new federal government to Philadelphia. From 1790 to 1794, while Philadelphia served as the nation's capital, Fraunces worked as George Washington's chief cook in the presidential household. His tavern and his kitchen placed him at the center of the young republic's political and social life.

Unity Township, PA

Fred McFeely Rogers (1928–2003) was born in nearby Latrobe, in the Westmoreland County hills of southwestern Pennsylvania, and grew up to become one of the gentlest revolutionaries in American life. As the creator and host of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," he spent more than three decades speaking directly and kindly to children about feelings, kindness, and self-worth. A tribute in his home county honors a native son who reshaped how a nation talks to its youngest citizens.

Latrobe, PA · est. 2016

Fred Rogers grew up in Latrobe and went on to create, write, compose for, host, and puppeteer Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, produced at Pittsburgh's WQED and broadcast from 1968 to 2001. An ordained minister, he built a quiet television world devoted to kindness, honesty, and a child's emotional life, and he was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for it.

Wilkes-Barre, PA · est. 2004

Fred Morgan Kirby opened his first five-and-ten-cent store in Wilkes-Barre in 1884, helping pioneer the fixed-low-price retailing that transformed how Americans shopped. By 1912 he had built a chain of 96 stores, which he merged into F. W. Woolworth to help form one of the world's great retail empires. A committed philanthropist, he directed major gifts to higher education—including the study of civil rights—and to public health and recreation across northeastern Pennsylvania.

Tyrone, PA · est. 2005

Fred Waring was born and raised in the Blair County town of Tyrone, where his gift for music took shape early. In 1919, while a student at Penn State, he launched "Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians," a musical ensemble that would entertain audiences for some seven decades across stage, film, radio, and television. His lush choral arrangements made him a household name and a fixture of American entertainment for generations.

Trappe, PA · est. 2008

Frederick Muhlenberg came of age as the American republic was being invented on paper. A Lutheran minister turned statesman, he sat in the Continental Congress, led Pennsylvania's assembly, and presided over the state convention that ratified the new federal Constitution in 1787. When the first Congress convened in 1789 he was chosen Speaker of the House, and his was the first signature on the Bill of Rights. He kept his home here in Trappe through those founding years.

West Chester, PA · est. 2006

Frederick Douglass, who escaped slavery to become the nation's most powerful abolitionist voice, was a frequent visitor to West Chester across his long career as an orator, editor, and diplomat. Here on February 1, 1895, he delivered his final public address, "Against Lynch Law," condemning the racial terror sweeping the post-Reconstruction South. He died just weeks later, making these words among the last of a lifetime spent demanding freedom and justice for all Americans.

Chambersburg, PA · est. 1994

In the tense summer of 1859, two of the era's towering opponents of slavery met secretly at a stone quarry outside Chambersburg. John Brown laid out his scheme to seize the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry and spark an armed uprising against slavery; Frederick Douglass, hearing the plan, judged it doomed and would not join. Weeks later Brown's October raid failed exactly as Douglass feared, and Brown was captured and hanged that December — an act that inflamed the nation on the eve of civil war.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1992

When it opened in 1895, Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital became Philadelphia's first hospital serving the Black community, at a time when segregation shut Black doctors and nurses out of most medical institutions. It offered both care to patients and training and employment to Black medical professionals who were otherwise barred from practice. In 1948 it joined with another Black-founded institution to form Mercy-Douglass Hospital.

West Mifflin, PA · est. 2019

At the dawn of the 20th century, Americans were flocking to a new kind of attraction—the electrically lit amusement park—and Frederick Ingersoll was one of its great inventors. From Pittsburgh he designed Figure-8 coasters and other rides that appeared across the country, and in 1905 he launched his dazzling, brightly illuminated Luna Parks in the Oakland neighborhood, sparking imitators worldwide. He also built some of Kennywood's earliest rides, including the Old Mill and the park's first Racer coaster.

Lynn Township, PA · est. 1928

In September 1777, with British troops advancing on Philadelphia, patriots feared the great State House bell would be melted for cannon. Local farmer Frederick Leaser hitched his farm team and hauled the bell north to Allentown, where it was hidden beneath the floor of Zion Reformed Church until the danger passed. More than half a century later his grandson used the same wagon to carry a liberty pole to this spot, its Jacksonian legend against nullification tying one generation's revolution to the next's fight over the Union.

Carlisle, PA · est. 1994

On this Cumberland County tract in the mid-19th century, Frederick Watts laid out a model farm meant to prove that agriculture could be run as rationally as any industry. Watts helped found the Farmers' High School that grew into Penn State, led Pennsylvania's first agricultural society, and served as U.S. Commissioner of Agriculture in the 1870s. His careful site plans and building designs were arguments in wood and soil for a more efficient American farm.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1992

Founded in 1787 under the leadership of Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, the Free African Society was one of the earliest mutual-aid organizations created by and for Black Americans. It offered support, structure, and a sense of shared identity to Philadelphia's free Black community in the fragile early years of the new republic. Out of its fellowship grew the first independent African-American churches in the city.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2010

On August 3, 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood at this Philadelphia intersection and addressed a crowd of 10,000. His "Freedom Now" tour carried the movement into the Black neighborhoods of northern cities — Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland, Boston — to thank supporters, raise funds, and bolster local civil rights efforts. King's aim was to knit a broad coalition around the shared struggles Black communities faced across the country.

Stoneboro, PA · est. 1948

Beginning around 1825, men and women escaping slavery in the South found their way north along the secret routes of the Underground Railroad and settled near this place in search of liberty. After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 made even the free states perilous, most pushed on to Canada, though the community's cemetery—still in use—remains a short distance up the road. The road itself carried the hope its name proclaims.

Loyalsock Township, PA · est. 1993

Daniel Hughes, a Black raftsman who steered timber down the Susquehanna River, used his travels to a darker purpose for slavery's defenders: in the years before the Civil War he guided fugitives from Maryland to his home here, sheltering them before they moved north to freedom along the Underground Railroad. Hughes gave part of his land for a cemetery, where nine known African American veterans of the Civil War are buried. Known as Freedom Road Cemetery since 1936, the ground honors both the escape network and the men who later fought for the Union.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1991

This building has worn many identities across a century and a half—first the home of famed tragedian Edwin Forrest, then the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, and later Heritage House. In 1968 it became the Freedom Theatre, a community-rooted Black theater dedicated to professional training in the dramatic arts. Amid the era's civil-rights ferment, it gave African-American performers a stage and a school of their own.

Cochranton, PA · est. 1946

French Creek was known to the French as the Riviere aux Boeufs before a young George Washington gave it its English name during his 1753 mission to warn the French out of the Ohio Country. The waterway served as a vital corridor during the French and Indian War, linking Lake Erie to the Allegheny, and later carried settlers into northwestern Pennsylvania. Its banks saw the movement of armies, traders, and pioneers alike.

LeBoeuf Township, PA · est. 1946

The French knew this stream as the Riviere aux Boeufs, part of their chain of waterways linking Lake Erie to the Ohio. When young George Washington passed through in 1753 on his mission to the French, he gave it the English name French Creek. The waterway became a corridor for troops and traders during the French and Indian War and later for the settlers who opened northwestern Pennsylvania.

Union Township, PA · est. 1948

Built between 1827 and 1834 and repaired in 1841, this feeder canal drew water from French Creek and carried it to Conneaut Lake, the great reservoir that supplied the Erie Extension Canal. Feeders like this were the unseen plumbing of the canal age, keeping the main navigation channels deep enough to float loaded boats. The larger system it served linked Erie and New Castle and operated from 1844 to 1871.

West Mead Township, PA · est. 1948

The overgrown canal bed beside the road here is part of a channel dug between 1827 and 1834 to carry water from Meadville to Conneaut Lake for the Erie Extension Canal. Two miles downstream the feeder crossed a creek on an aqueduct, a bridge of water over water that was among the most striking engineering feats of the canal age. This modest ditch was one strand in the network that briefly made northwestern Pennsylvania a highway of commerce.

North Beaver Township, PA · est. 1922

This stone marks Friedensstadt, or "City of Peace," a mission village of Christian Delaware Indians founded here in the early 1770s under the guidance of Moravian missionaries. Many of its people had followed the same faith from earlier settlements at Wyalusing and along the Allegheny, moving repeatedly to stay clear of the mounting violence of the frontier. The community's long westward journey eventually carried it to the Moravian missions of Gnadenhütten and Schoenbrunn in the Tuscarawas Valley of Ohio.

Wyalusing Township, PA · est. 1948

In 1763 the Moravian missionary David Zeisberger founded Friedenshuetten at the Native town of Wyalusing along the Susquehanna. The mission became a model for later Moravian efforts among Indigenous peoples, blending Christian worship with communal village life until it was abandoned in 1772. That year, pastors Ettwein and Roth led roughly two hundred converts westward to a new mission, Friedensstadt, near the Ohio country — part of the long, often tragic displacement of Native communities.

North Beaver Township, PA · est. 1948

In 1770 the Moravian missionary David Zeisberger led a band of Christian Delaware (Lenape) converts down from the upper Allegheny to found Friedensstadt — 'City of Peace' — on the Beaver River. Arriving on the eastern bank on May 3, the community soon shifted to the west side, seeking a stable home for a mission that tried to carve out a place of refuge for Native Christians amid the pressures of the frontier. It was one of a chain of Moravian Indian towns whose fortunes rose and fell with the turbulence of the era.

North Beaver Township, PA · est. 1948

By April 1773 the Christian Delaware of Friedensstadt, guided by the missionary John Heckewelder, abandoned their Beaver River town and resettled on the Muskingum River in what is now Ohio. There tragedy overtook them: on March 8, 1782, Pennsylvania militiamen murdered scores of these peaceful, unarmed converts at Gnadenhütten in one of the darkest atrocities of the Revolutionary frontier. The marker traces the thread from this quiet Pennsylvania mission to that infamous massacre.

Blairsville, PA · est. 2004

In April 1858, with the Fugitive Slave Act empowering federal marshals and Southern slave-catchers to reach deep into the free states, the people of Blairsville acted. They rescued a man named Newman from arrest, and local Black abolitionist Lewis Johnson—a conductor on the Underground Railroad—sheltered him. Indiana County had long been an important station on the secret routes north.

McConnellsburg, PA · est. 1982

Established from Bedford County in 1850, Fulton County honors Robert Fulton, the Pennsylvania-born pioneer of the steamboat. Its seat, McConnellsburg, was incorporated in 1814 in the ridges of south-central Pennsylvania. During the Civil War the county saw the first casualties of the Confederacy's Gettysburg Campaign, and in 1864 it hosted the last Confederate campsite on Pennsylvania soil.