Historic Markers in Pennsylvania

Cumberland Township, PA

Companies E and I of the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry — famous as "Rush's Lancers," the Union army's lance-carrying troopers — served in the Reserve Brigade of the Cavalry Corps at Gettysburg. Rather than charging in the fighting, these companies were detailed as the personal escort to Major General George G. Meade, commander of the Army of the Potomac. Survivors of the regiment later raised this monument to mark their place at the great battle.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument honors the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry — famed as "Rush's Lancers" for the long lances they once carried — and its service at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863. The inscription records 365 men engaged and their losses: three killed, seven wounded, and two missing. It marks the role Union cavalry played in screening and protecting the army during the battle's final day.

Hamiltonban Township, PA

In the fighting around Gettysburg on July 3, 1863, the regular-army 6th U.S. Cavalry pressed two local farmhouses — the Marshall and Culberson homes — into service as temporary field hospitals for its wounded. Regiments like the 6th bore hard duty in the campaign, and this marker in Hamiltonban Township remembers the grim work of caring for the injured once the guns fell silent.

Cumberland Township, PA

The 71st Pennsylvania Volunteers, nicknamed the "California Regiment," fought at Gettysburg under Colonel R. Penn Smith as part of the Philadelphia Brigade. This monument records that the regiment carried 24 officers and 307 enlisted men into action and suffered 98 casualties killed, wounded, and missing. Positioned near the center of the Union line, the regiment stood among the troops who met the Confederate assault of July 1863.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument to the 76th New York Infantry, raised largely in Cortland County, marks where the regiment helped open the infantry fighting at Gettysburg on the morning of July 1, 1863. It records the unit's day-long ordeal — its first stand here, a second at the railroad cut, and a third on Culp's Hill over the following days. As one of the first Union regiments engaged, it paid a steep price to slow the Confederate advance until reinforcements could arrive.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument marks the positions held by the 76th New York Infantry during the Battle of Gettysburg, July 1–3, 1863. As part of the First Corps, the regiment was among the first Union units to open fire on McPherson Ridge on the battle's opening morning, then fell back through the day's fighting to make later stands at the railroad cut and Culp's Hill. The inscription traces a single regiment's grueling path across the three-day battle.

Cumberland Township, PA

Erected by the State of Ohio, this monument marks the 82nd Ohio Infantry of the Second Brigade, Third Division, Eleventh Corps at Gettysburg. On July 1, 1863, the regiment stood in the Union line on the fields north of town, where Carl Schurz's German-American division fought to hold back the Confederate assault before retreating to the heights beyond Gettysburg. It was one of many Ohio regiments memorialized on the battlefield by their home state.

Cumberland Township, PA

On the afternoon of July 2, 1863, the second day at Gettysburg, the fight for Little Round Top became one of the most desperate contests of the battle as Union regiments raced to hold the Army of the Potomac's exposed left flank. This monument marks where the 83rd Pennsylvania Infantry took position and beat back repeated Confederate assaults before helping press the enemy back. The regiment fought as part of the brigade that famously anchored that rocky hill under heavy pressure.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument marks where the 88th Pennsylvania Infantry went into action during the Battle of Gettysburg, reaching the field in time to help throw back the Confederate assault of July 3, 1863 — the climactic third day of the fight. The regiment held its position here until the morning of July 6, when the Union army began following Lee's beaten forces south. Pennsylvania later raised such monuments across the battlefield to fix exactly where each of its regiments stood.

Slippery Rock Township, PA

On the morning of September 11, 2001, coordinated terrorist attacks struck the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon outside Washington, and a field in rural Pennsylvania, in the deadliest such assault ever carried out on American soil. In the years that followed, communities across the country — including small townships far from the crash sites — raised monuments like this one so that neighbors could gather, remember, and grieve together. For Pennsylvanians the day carried a particular closeness, as one of the hijacked airliners came down in the state's own countryside.

Cumberland Township, PA

On the afternoon of July 2, 1863, the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the 99th Pennsylvania Infantry held this ground on the Union left, where the fighting swirled around Devil's Den and the rocky slopes below Little Round Top. As Confederate assaults threatened to turn the army's flank, regiments like the 99th fought desperately to keep the high ground in Federal hands. This granite monument, one of hundreds placed across the battlefield by veterans and their states, marks the line where these Pennsylvanians stood.

Cumberland Township, PA

Erected by a veterans' association and friends, this monument remembers the fallen of the 99th Pennsylvania Volunteers, who served in the Third Corps line during the fighting of July 2 and 3, 1863, at Gettysburg. The regiment was among the units drawn into the brutal combat on the army's left, where the second day's assaults tested the Union position to its limit. The dedication 'In memoriam our fallen comrades' reflects how survivors, years afterward, returned to consecrate the ground where friends had died.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument marks a position of the 9th Massachusetts Battery under Captain John Bigelow on July 2, 1863, during the Battle of Gettysburg. Ordered to slow the Confederate advance of Barksdale's Brigade, the battery famously fought "by prolonge" — dragging its guns rearward while continuing to fire, without infantry to protect it — before making a desperate final stand near the Trostle farm. It commemorates one of the most celebrated artillery actions of the entire battle.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument marks the first position of the 9th Massachusetts Battery, Captain John Bigelow's guns, along the Wheatfield Road late on July 2, 1863. From roughly 4:30 to 6:00 p.m. the battery held this ground during the Confederate assault on the Union left at Gettysburg before being forced to withdraw. It is one of several markers tracing Bigelow's fighting retreat across the battlefield.

Stroudsburg, PA · est. 2007

A. Mitchell Palmer built his career in Stroudsburg, where he practiced law before serving in Congress and, from 1919 to 1921, as U.S. Attorney General. His name became fixed to the "Palmer Raids," the sweeping arrests of suspected radicals, anarchists, and immigrants during the postwar "Red Scare" that gripped the nation after World War I. A 1920 contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, Palmer embodied both the anxieties and the civil-liberties controversies of his era.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1991

Beginning in 1836, the A.M.E. Book Concern operated here as a publishing arm of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, printing hymnals, religious materials, and the work of Black authors at a time when few outlets would. In 1847 it launched The Christian Recorder, one of the oldest continuously published African American periodicals. Bishop Benjamin Tucker Tanner led the firm as editor until 1884.

Doylestown, PA · est. 2004

In the years around World War II, photographer Aaron Siskind wandered the barns, walls, and weathered facades of Bucks County with his camera. What began as documentary record-keeping gradually dissolved into something new: close, abstract studies of surface and form that treated a peeling wall like a canvas. That shift, worked out here in rural Pennsylvania between 1939 and 1945, helped push American photography toward fine art.

Plymouth, PA · est. 1989

In 1807 Abijah Smith bought 75 acres along Ransom Creek and, with his brother John, began floating anthracite coal down the Susquehanna River on flat-bottomed arks—a trade they sustained for two decades. In 1818 the firm became the first to blast Pennsylvania coal loose with gunpowder, a leap in mining technique. Kept in the family for nearly seventy years, Abijah Smith & Company is remembered as the first commercially successful anthracite business in the United States.

Abington Township, PA · est. 1992

Founded in 1714, Abington Presbyterian Church stood at the heart of one of Montgomery County's oldest colonial communities, with its adjoining burial ground opening in 1719 and receiving its first recorded interment in 1728. The grounds saw Revolutionary War skirmishing as armies maneuvered across the Philadelphia countryside, and generations of pastors, educators, and war veterans were laid to rest here. The cemetery links Abington to the wider intellectual worlds of Philadelphia and Princeton through the notable clergy and teachers buried within it.

Whitemarsh Township, PA · est. 2000

By the 1850s the Corson family's Whitemarsh homestead — a station on the Underground Railroad since long before — had become a center of antislavery activism. In 1856 George and Martha Maulsby Corson opened a meeting hall above their carriage shed where leading abolitionist orators addressed crowds of up to 200. Decades later the hall found a second life as the studio of Thomas Hovenden, whose painting "Last Moments of John Brown" became one of the era's iconic images of the abolitionist cause.

South Whitehall Township, PA · est. 1929

Born in Grabs, Switzerland, Abraham Blumer crossed the Atlantic to serve the German Reformed congregations of the Lehigh Valley, ministering at Jordan, Union, Egypt, and Allentown from 1771 to 1801. During the Revolution he also served as chaplain to the First Battalion of the Northampton County Militia. He spent three decades tending to the spiritual life of his frontier congregations and is buried in this cemetery.

Upper Darby, PA · est. 1985

Abraham L. Pennock lived at Hoodland, a house built by his father-in-law in 1823, until his death in 1868. A leader in the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, he lent his energy to abolition alongside the causes of woman suffrage and temperance. Reform-minded visitors, including the poets John Greenleaf Whittier and James Russell Lowell, passed through his doors.

Harrisburg, PA · est. 1953

In the tense winter of 1861, as seven states had already declared their secession, President-elect Abraham Lincoln made his slow, whistle-stop journey east toward his inauguration. On February 22 — Washington's Birthday — he paused in Harrisburg at the Jones House hotel and spoke from its portico to a crowd packed into Market Square. Within days he would slip secretly through Baltimore amid assassination fears to reach the capital.

Hanover, PA · est. 1954

On November 18, 1863, a half block east of here, Abraham Lincoln paused during his journey to Gettysburg and spoke briefly to a gathered crowd from his special train. He was on his way to dedicate the National Cemetery there — the occasion for which, the next day, he would deliver the Gettysburg Address. This small trackside moment placed the wartime president, if only for a few minutes, among the ordinary townspeople of Hanover.

Bristol, PA · est. 1991

On February 21, 1861, the train carrying President-elect Abraham Lincoln from Springfield toward his inauguration in Washington paused near this point in Bristol, where he stepped onto the rear platform to greet a crowd of more than a thousand. His long, winding journey east came in the tense weeks after Southern states had begun to secede, and such whistle-stop appearances let anxious citizens glimpse the untested leader on whom the Union's fate now rested.

White Township, PA · est. 2009

Raised in the Indiana County countryside, Absalom Hazlett grew into a committed abolitionist and joined John Brown's small provisional army for the 1859 raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. The plan to arm enslaved people and spark their liberation collapsed, and Hazlett was captured, tried, and hanged for his part. Yet the raid electrified a divided nation and pushed it closer to open conflict.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2013

When the Academy of Natural Sciences was founded in Philadelphia in 1812, the young republic was hungry to catalog the flora, fauna, and fossils of a still-unmapped continent. As the oldest natural science institution in the Americas, it became a hub for naturalists and explorers, amassing collections that helped define the study of life on Earth. It moved to its grand Logan Square home in 1876 and today anchors scientific research at Drexel University.

Somerset, PA · est. 1954

In 1795, as settlement pushed into the mountains of western Pennsylvania, Adam Schneider laid out the northern half of the newly renamed town of Somerset. With his brother Jacob he opened the settlement's first store on this site, giving the young frontier community an early anchor of commerce and everyday life.

Gettysburg, PA · est. 1982

Established in 1800 and named for President John Adams, this county in Pennsylvania's rolling southern hills became known for its orchards and fruit harvests. Its seat, Gettysburg, was a quiet crossroads town until July 1863, when it became the site of the Civil War's bloodiest and most decisive battle. That autumn, President Abraham Lincoln came to dedicate the soldiers' cemetery and delivered the brief, immortal Gettysburg Address.

Cresson Township, PA · est. 1948

The Cambria County hills near Cresson gave the nation one of its most famous polar explorers, Robert E. Peary, born here in 1856. Peary spent decades pushing into the Arctic, and his expeditions toward the North Pole made him a household name in the age of heroic exploration. This park and its monument honor the boy from the Pennsylvania highlands who became a rear admiral and a symbol of American ambition at the ends of the earth.

Rockhill, PA · est. 1995

When the United States entered the First World War in 1917, William Sims commanded American naval forces operating in European waters, coordinating with the Royal Navy against the German submarine campaign that was strangling Allied shipping. A sharp-penned naval writer and reformer, he had left this small Huntingdon County community for the U.S. Naval Academy back in 1876, and his family lived in the house opposite this marker for nearly two decades. His career bridged the age of sail-trained officers and the modern steel navy that fought a global war.

Radnor Township, PA

Radnor Township lies along Philadelphia's storied 'Main Line,' where the railroad drew the region's wealthiest families to build grand country estates in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 'Adrossen' was one such named estate — part of a landscape of gentleman's farms, gardens, and manor houses that gave the Main Line its enduring reputation for genteel affluence.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1998

For more than eight decades, Black baseball thrived in Philadelphia, from the Pythians and Excelsiors of 1867 to the great professional clubs of the twentieth century. The Philadelphia Giants claimed early championships, the Hilldale club won the 1925 Colored World Series, and the Philadelphia Stars competed in the Negro National League. These teams built a proud institution while the major leagues remained closed to Black players.

Erie, PA · est. 1996

When Oliver Hazard Perry's squadron met and captured a British fleet on Lake Erie on September 10, 1813, African American sailors were among the skilled seamen who made the victory possible. Their labor and seamanship were critical to one of the young United States' most decisive naval triumphs in the War of 1812. This marker at Erie, where much of that fleet was built and based, restores their names to the record of that day.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1990

In 1794, fifteen men and three women broke away from St. George's Church, under the leadership of the pioneering Black preacher Harry Hosier, to found African Zoar here. Through the turbulent decades that followed, the congregation became active in the Underground Railroad, sheltering freedom-seekers in a city that was a crucial northern crossing point. Zoar moved to 12th and Melon Streets in 1883 and endures as United Methodism's oldest Black congregation.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1991

Alain Leroy Locke was born here in 1886 and became one of the most influential interpreters of the Harlem Renaissance, the flowering of Black art and letters in the 1920s. A Harvard graduate and the first African American Rhodes Scholar, he taught for decades at Howard University while championing Black writers, artists, and musicians. His editing and criticism helped define the movement he called the flourishing of the 'New Negro.'

Windber, PA · est. 2003

In the early 1950s a disc jockey named Alan Freed borrowed a phrase from the rhythm-and-blues records he loved and gave a whole era its name: rock and roll. Broadcasting as "Moondog," Freed spun up-tempo Black R&B for growing audiences and carried the sound onto television, film, and the concert stage, staging what is remembered as the nation's first rock-and-roll concert in 1952. Raised in Windber, he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.

Monroe Township, PA · est. 1947

On July 6, 1754, at the great intercolonial council in Albany, the Six Nations of the Iroquois deeded a vast tract of land to Pennsylvania's Proprietors — a transaction that opened enormous new territory to European settlement. The northeast corner of that purchase lay a mile north of Penns Creek, its boundary running vaguely 'north of the west as far as your Province extends.' Such sweeping and loosely defined cessions would soon fuel bitter conflict on the frontier.

Clark, PA · est. 1948

Albert Bushnell Hart, born nearby in 1854, spent his childhood years in this vicinity before rising to become one of America's most influential historians. A Harvard graduate, he taught at that university for six decades, shaping how generations of students and scholars understood the nation's past through his prolific writing and editing. He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1943, having helped establish American history as a rigorous academic discipline.

Point Marion, PA · est. 2014

Albert Gallatin was one of the young republic's most consequential statesmen, serving as U.S. Secretary of the Treasury from 1801 to 1814—still the longest tenure in the office's history. He funded the Lewis and Clark Expedition, worked steadily to reduce the national debt, and helped negotiate the Treaty of Ghent that ended the War of 1812. In the 1790s his moderating influence helped defuse western Pennsylvania's Whiskey Rebellion, and his home, Friendship Hill, stands nearby.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2016

A prominent figure in Philadelphia's Jewish community, Albert Greenfield built one of the East Coast's great business empires in the first half of the twentieth century, spanning department stores, real estate, hotels, and banks. His wealth made him a power broker in city and national politics, where he championed reform. He also lent his standing to causes beyond commerce, backing equality for African Americans and interfaith understanding between Catholics and Jews.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2003

Alfred J. Reach was among the first men to play baseball for pay, starring at second base for the Philadelphia Athletics from 1865 to 1875 as the sport turned professional. He went on to become the Phillies' first owner and president and published the widely read "Official Base Ball Guide." His firm, A.J. Reach & Co., based here, grew into a major maker of baseballs and sporting goods.

Pottsville, PA · est. 2024

Pottsville native Allan Jaffe left Pennsylvania for New Orleans, where he and his wife Sandra took over a struggling French Quarter art gallery and turned it into Preservation Hall, a shrine to traditional New Orleans jazz. Playing sousaphone himself, Jaffe founded the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and carried the music of the city's aging masters to concert halls and festivals around the world. His stewardship helped ensure that an older generation of New Orleans musicians found new audiences and lasting recognition.

Altoona, PA · est. 1999

Raised in 1811, the Alleghany Furnace was among the earliest ironworks in what became Blair County, part of the charcoal-iron industry that spread through Pennsylvania's mountains in the early republic. Elias Baker acquired full ownership by 1844 and built a Greek Revival mansion nearby, tying the furnace to a prosperous ironmaster's household that ran it until it went cold in 1884. The surviving stone store building, erected around 1837, still marks the site of this vanished industrial world.

Pittsburgh, PA · est. 1967

Rising on the banks of the Allegheny in 1814, this federal arsenal was designed by Benjamin Henry Latrobe, one of the young republic's most important architects. For generations it garrisoned troops and manufactured and stored munitions, feeding the U.S. Army through the Civil War, the Indian Wars of the West, and the Spanish-American War. As an ordnance works it made Pittsburgh a linchpin of American military supply across the nineteenth century.

Meadville, PA

In 1815, when the country west of the Allegheny Mountains was still raw frontier, a Massachusetts-born minister named Timothy Alden set out to plant a college in the young town of Meadville, Pennsylvania. Chartered two years later, Allegheny College endured where many early frontier schools failed, and it holds the distinction of being the oldest college still operating under its original name west of those mountains. Alden, the school's first president, also designed Bentley Hall, the graceful early building that became the heart of campus administration.

Pittsburgh, PA · est. 2007

In 1845 and 1848, women who worked the cotton factories of Allegheny City walked off the job to protest brutal twelve-hour workdays, taking a stand in one of early America's first waves of industrial labor action. Their protests helped push Pennsylvania to pass an 1848 law capping the workday at ten hours and barring children under twelve from cotton and textile mills. These were among the earliest organized efforts by American working women to demand humane conditions.

Pittsburgh, PA

When Allegheny County was carved out of Westmoreland and Washington counties in 1788, its seat at Pittsburgh was already a generation old — laid out in 1764 at the strategic forks where the Allegheny and Monongahela join to form the Ohio, a gateway that had drawn soldiers, traders, and settlers pushing west. Incorporated as a city in 1816, Pittsburgh grew into one of the great engines of American industry, its furnaces and mills pouring out the iron and steel that earned the region its "Workshop of the World" reputation. The county's story runs straight from a frontier river junction to the smoke-and-fire heart of the nation's industrial age.

Pittsburgh, PA · est. 1982

Formed in 1788 and named for the Allegheny River, this county grew around Pittsburgh, a settlement laid out in 1764 at the strategic forks of the Ohio. As the 19th century advanced, the city's furnaces and mills made it a titan of iron and steel, earning it the boast "Workshop of the World." Immigrants poured in to feed the industry that armed and built modern America.

Shippen Township, PA · est. 1949

Long before roads crossed the mountains, travelers moving between the Susquehanna's West Branch and the Allegheny River faced a 23-mile overland carry that began at a "canoe place" near this point. Native peoples and later pioneers hauled their canoes north to Portage Creek, then took to the water again near present-day Port Alleghany. The route stitched two great watersheds together across the Pennsylvania wilderness.

Port Allegany, PA · est. 1949

Here the waters of two great river systems nearly meet, and travelers long exploited the gap. The roughly 23-mile Allegheny Portage carried canoes and cargo overland from the West Branch of the Susquehanna, up Portage Creek to a "canoe place" near this point, where boats could be relaunched down the Allegheny toward the Ohio country. Native people and, later, pioneers used this crossing to move between the eastern and western drainages of Pennsylvania.

Portage Township, PA · est. 1994

Before tunnels pierced the Alleghenies, the mountains stood as a wall across Pennsylvania's ambitious canal system. From 1834 to 1854 the Allegheny Portage Railroad solved the problem with a feat of engineering, hauling entire canal boats up and over the ridge along a series of inclined planes on a 36-mile line between Hollidaysburg and Johnstown. Horses and mules pulled the first cars, later giving way to steam locomotives, with Plane No. 2 serving as the line's headquarters.

Allegany Township, PA · est. 1947

High in Potter County rises the modest headwater of the Allegheny, a river whose importance far outstrips its quiet source. For centuries it carried Native travelers, and later French and British traders and westward-bound settlers, deep into the interior. Winding hundreds of miles to Pittsburgh, it joins the Monongahela to form the mighty Ohio, one of the great arteries of the American continent.

Allentown, PA · est. 1947

Allentown was laid out in 1762 by William Allen, a wealthy Philadelphia merchant and chief justice of colonial Pennsylvania, and was known as Northampton until 1834. Its most storied moment came in 1777, when patriots spirited the Liberty Bell out of Philadelphia ahead of the advancing British and hid it here, while the town also sheltered wounded Continental soldiers. Incorporated as a city in 1867, Allentown went on to thrive as a center of textiles and cement.

Whitehall, PA · est. 1947

Laid out in 1762 by the powerful colonial jurist William Allen, this Lehigh Valley town spent its first seventy years known as Northampton before taking its founder's name. In the anxious autumn of 1777, as the British occupied Philadelphia, the Liberty Bell was spirited here for safekeeping and Revolutionary wounded were nursed in the town. It grew through the 19th century into a humming center of textiles and cement, earning its city charter in 1867.

South Whitehall Township, PA · est. 1947

Founded in 1762 by the colonial leader and jurist William Allen, this town went by the name Northampton until 1834. During the Revolution its distance from the Delaware made it a safe haven — the Liberty Bell was hidden here in 1777 and wounded Continental soldiers were treated nearby. Chartered as a city in 1867, it became a long-lived hub of textile mills and cement works.

South Whitehall Township, PA · est. 1947

William Allen, a leading colonial jurist, established this settlement in 1762; it answered to the name Northampton until 1834. In 1777 it sheltered the Liberty Bell from advancing British forces and hosted Revolutionary wounded. Incorporated as a city in 1867, it flourished as a center of textiles and cement manufacture.

Allentown, PA · est. 2024

Allentown State Hospital opened as Pennsylvania's first state institution to treat mental illness through homeopathic medicine, part of a national movement to give the mentally ill dedicated care. Among those who worked here was Dr. Solomon C. Fuller, the first African American psychiatrist, who served as a consulting pathologist, and in 1930 a pioneering Children's Institute opened under Dr. Henry Klopp. In 1999 the hospital drew international attention as the first state facility to abandon patient seclusion in favor of its Psychiatric Emergency Response Teams.

Bryn Athyn, PA

In the 1880s, when railroads were reshaping how Americans spent their leisure time, the Alnwick Grove picnic grounds opened along the banks of Pennypack Creek. It was a shrewd bit of promotion: the newly built Philadelphia to Newtown line needed weekend passengers, and a shady grove within an easy train ride gave city dwellers a reason to buy a ticket. Excursion parks like this one turned a stretch of countryside into a destination, and the clatter of holiday-bound trains became a familiar summer sound.

Altoona, PA · est. 1947

Altoona was born of the railroad, laid out in 1849 as the mountain-base terminal from which the Pennsylvania Railroad pushed its tracks westward over the daunting Allegheny front. Within a generation the town's yards and shops made it one of the great railroading centers of the nation. In 1867 it hosted a War Governors' Conference, one of several wartime and postwar gatherings that made the city a meeting ground for state leaders.