Historic Markers in Pennsylvania

Middletown Township, PA · est. 1993

A Civil War veteran and Philadelphia attorney, Joshua Pusey turned an inventor's mind to an everyday problem and in 1892 patented the paper matchbook. He sold the patent to the Diamond Match Company three years later, and soon millions of the little folders were rolling out each year to light stoves, lamps, and cigarettes across the country. One of nearly forty patents in his lifetime, it was the work of a man from an old Quaker family who lived here at his home "Maple Linden."

South Park Township, PA

This memorial honors Joyce Kilmer (1886–1918), the American writer best known as a "soldier poet," who was killed in action near Ourcq, France, in the summer of 1918. Kilmer volunteered for service in World War I and died during the fierce fighting of that year's Allied offensives. His verse and his sacrifice made him one of the era's most widely mourned literary figures.

Williamsport, PA · est. 2010

Julia C. Collins was a Black essayist and teacher in Civil War–era Williamsport whose serialized novel, The Curse of Caste, is regarded as among the first published novels by an African American woman. Appearing in 1865 in the AME Church's Christian Recorder, a paper read across the nation, her fiction and essays reached a wide Black readership at the very moment of emancipation. She died that same year, her story left tantalizingly unfinished.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1991

In an era when the profession was almost entirely closed to Black Americans, Julian Abele broke through as the first African American to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania's architecture school. As chief designer in Horace Trumbauer's prominent firm, he shaped some of Philadelphia's grandest civic buildings, including the monumental Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Free Library on Logan Square. For much of his career his contributions went publicly uncredited, hidden behind the firm's name even as his designs defined the city's Beaux-Arts skyline.

Mifflintown, PA · est. 1982

Juniata County, split from Mifflin County in 1831, takes its name from the scenic river that threads through it. For generations the valley served as a natural highway: first the footpaths of Native travelers, then a turnpike, a canal, and finally the railroad, each layering a new mode of movement onto the same route through the mountains. Mifflintown, the county seat, was incorporated in 1833 as this corridor of trade and travel matured.

Worth Township, PA · est. 1947

Between 1790 and 1850 the streams of this region powered dozens of charcoal furnaces and forges, and the metal they produced—known as Juniata iron—was reckoned the finest in America. Its ruins still line the valleys, silent monuments to a once-thriving trade. The industry's long reign came to a close as coal- and coke-fired methods overtook the older charcoal process.

Cromwell Township, PA · est. 1947

Between 1790 and 1850, the streams of the Juniata region powered dozens of charcoal iron furnaces and forges whose ruins still dot the landscape. Juniata iron earned a reputation as the finest in America, prized for its purity and strength in an age before industrial steelmaking. The industry's reign ended in the mid-19th century as ironmakers shifted to coal and coke fuel, drawing production toward the coalfields and cities.

Morris Township, PA · est. 1947

Between 1790 and 1850, the streams of the Juniata region powered dozens of charcoal iron furnaces and forges whose ruins still dot the landscape. Juniata iron earned a reputation as the finest in America, prized for its purity and strength in an age before industrial steelmaking. The industry's reign ended in the mid-19th century as ironmakers shifted to coal and coke fuel, drawing production toward the coalfields and cities.

Oliver Township, PA · est. 1947

Between 1790 and 1850 the streams of this region powered a cluster of charcoal-fired iron furnaces and forges whose product, known as Juniata iron, was prized as the finest in America. Fueled by hardwood charcoal and local ore, these ironworks made the valley an early industrial heartland. Their reign ended as furnaces fired by coal and coke—cheaper and larger in scale—rose to dominate the trade, leaving only ruins along the water.

Woodbury Township, PA · est. 2015

Between 1790 and 1850 the streams of Morrison Cove powered dozens of charcoal furnaces and forges that turned local ore into some of the finest iron in the country, a trade known as Juniata Iron. Springfield Furnace ran from 1820 to 1884 alongside eleven others, and ironmaster Samuel Royer built his mansion here in 1815. The industry faded once coal and coke made larger, cheaper iron possible.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1991

Congregation Mikveh Israel traces its roots to about 1740, when Philadelphia's small community of Jewish settlers first gathered to worship in rented rooms. In 1782, in the young republic taking shape after independence, they built the city's first synagogue on this ground. One of the oldest congregations in the nation, it wove Jewish life into the fabric of colonial and early American Philadelphia.

Karthaus Township, PA · est. 1948

Near this spot Peter Karthaus built an iron furnace in 1817, part of the early push to work the ore and timber of Pennsylvania's Clearfield County wilderness. Rebuilt in 1836, the furnace made a notable experiment in 1839 as one of the earliest in the region to try coke in place of charcoal for smelting iron. The venture proved short-lived and was abandoned that same year, but it foreshadowed the fuel revolution that would soon transform American iron.

Bensalem Township, PA · est. 2004

Born to a wealthy Philadelphia banking family, Katharine Drexel turned her inheritance toward the people her era most neglected. After professing her vows in 1891 she founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament and spent more than four decades building mission schools and churches for Native and African American communities, including Holy Providence School near this spot. In 2000 the Catholic Church recognized her as a saint.

Kutztown, PA · est. 2024

Keith Haring grew up in Kutztown before carrying its small-town roots into the electric art world of 1980s New York. He first drew notice with chalk drawings on the black paper of unused subway ad panels, developing a instantly recognizable style of bold lines, bright color, and dancing figures. His work spoke directly to the crises and causes of his moment—gay pride, the AIDS epidemic, the environment, and racism—and he founded a foundation to sustain his belief that "art is for everybody."

Horsham Township, PA · est. 1947

Sir William Keith built this country seat in 1722 while serving as lieutenant governor of colonial Pennsylvania, a proprietary official governing on behalf of the Penn family. After 1737 the estate passed to Dr. Thomas Graeme and became known as Graeme Park, one of the finest surviving early Georgian houses in the region. It stands as a rare window into the wealth and daily life of Pennsylvania's colonial governing class.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2004

In 1694 the German mystic Johannes Kelpius led a band of learned followers to the banks of the Wissahickon, drawn by William Penn's promise of religious liberty. Known as the "Hermits of the Wissahickon," they wrote poetry and music, studied the stars and plants, built one of the colonies' early pipe organs, and waited for the millennium they believed near. Notably tolerant for their age, they welcomed people of every background, including Native Americans, until the community faded after Kelpius's death in 1708.

McKeesport, PA · est. 2012

On April 21, 1947, two young, first-term members of the House Labor Committee met at the Penn-McKee Hotel in McKeesport to argue the merits of the newly proposed Taft-Hartley labor law. The debaters were John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon, then obscure congressmen at the start of their careers. Neither could know that thirteen years later they would face each other again in the first televised presidential debates.

West Mifflin, PA · est. 1992

Kennywood began in 1898 as a leafy picnic grove on Anthony Kenny's farm, leased by the Monongahela Street Railway to draw riders out along its trolley line—a classic "trolley park" of the era. Passed to private owners in 1906, it outlasted the Depression, recessions, and two World Wars while nearly all its trolley-park peers vanished. Its endurance earned it status as a National Historic Landmark in 1987.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2026

For three days in May 1844, the Kensington district erupted in the first of two riots that tore through Philadelphia that year, part of a national wave of Protestant nativist violence aimed at Irish Catholic immigrants. Dozens were killed or injured and more than thirty buildings were destroyed as local authorities failed to restore order. The chaos spurred lasting reforms, including the 1854 consolidation of the city, a unified police force, and the Catholic diocese's first parochial schools.

Taylor, PA · est. 1948

In 1769, three families led by Timothy Keys, Solomon Hocksey, and Andrew Hickman built the first European homes in what became Lackawanna County, settling along the creek that now bears Keys's name. The frontier peace did not hold: in July 1778, amid the violence of the Revolutionary borderlands, Keys and others were killed in an Indian raid. Their brief settlement marks the earliest European foothold in the valley.

Pymatuning Township, PA · est. 1995

Built in 1868 across the Shenango River, Kidd's Mill Covered Bridge is the last historic covered bridge left standing in Mercer County. It is prized as the only surviving Pennsylvania bridge using the all-wooden truss design patented by Robert Smith of Tippecanoe City, Ohio—a distinctive engineering pattern from the golden age of American covered bridges. Stretching 120 feet, it was carefully restored in 1990.

Pittsburgh, PA

In the early 1850s, years before Edwin Drake's famous 1859 oil well, a Pittsburgh druggist named Samuel M. Kier was already turning a nuisance into an industry. Crude oil kept fouling the salt wells his family worked at Tarentum, so Kier tinkered with distilling it — and around 1854, on this site, he set up a small five-barrel still to refine that crude into clean-burning 'carbon oil' for lamps. It was, in effect, America's first commercial petroleum refinery, lighting homes before anyone imagined an oil boom.

Hanover, PA · est. 1954

On June 30, 1863, as Confederate cavalry struck the Union rear southeast of town, Brigadier General Judson Kilpatrick set up the headquarters of his Third Cavalry Division in this Hanover building. From here he directed the Union response during the fighting that briefly gave Stuart's troopers the town. The episode came just days before the armies met at Gettysburg.

Beaver, PA · est. 1946

The town of Beaver carries the name of a Delaware (Lenape) chief whose village stood nearby in the eighteenth century. Sitting at the junction of trails along the Ohio and Beaver Rivers, the settlement became a hub in the fur trade that drew European and Native traders deep into the Ohio Country. The name endured long after the village itself was gone.

Hamlin Township, PA · est. 2011

Begun in 1881 to carry coal, lumber, and oil across a deep Pennsylvania valley, the Kinzua Viaduct rose as the highest and longest railroad bridge in the world. Rebuilt in 1900 to bear ever-heavier loads, it served until 1959 and became the centerpiece of a state park. In 2003 a tornado tore through and toppled much of the span; the surviving towers were stabilized and topped with a dramatic skywalk in 2011.

Applewold, PA

For a generation before the French and Indian War, Kittanning was the largest Delaware (Lenape) town beyond the Allegheny front, a thriving community on the Allegheny River whose name carried the sense of the "great river" that fed the Ohio country. From the 1730s it grew into a hub of Native life and, by the 1750s, a staging ground for raids on frontier settlements. In September 1756 a Pennsylvania force under Lt. Col. John Armstrong marched west and burned the town, one of the war's few colonial strikes deep into Indian country.

Kittanning, PA

For roughly a generation, this bluff above the Allegheny River held Kittanning, the largest Delaware (Lenape) town west of the Appalachian ridges — a thriving community whose name honored the "great river" it overlooked. During the French and Indian War it became a staging ground for raids on Pennsylvania's frontier settlements, and in September 1756 a colonial force under Colonel John Armstrong marched over the mountains and burned it. The destruction of the village broke a key node in the borderland war and became one of Pennsylvania's most celebrated frontier exploits.

Kittanning, PA

On this river flat above the Allegheny stood Kittanning, also called Attiqué, a Lenni-Lenape (Delaware) town that by 1727 had become the most important Native settlement west of the mountains as the Delaware pushed westward from the Susquehanna. During the French and Indian War it served as a staging base for raids on Pennsylvania's frontier settlements. In September 1756 Colonel John Armstrong led some 300 provincial troops from the Cumberland Valley on a surprise strike that destroyed the town.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1994

Perched above the Pennypack, Knowlton was designed in 1881 by Frank Furness, among the boldest and most inventive American architects of the Victorian age, for banker William Rhawn. With its muscular massing and idiosyncratic ornament, the country house broke from convention and helped redefine what a modern American home could be. Furness's daring style would influence a generation, including a young draftsman in his office named Louis Sullivan.

Jenkins Township, PA · est. 1999

On January 22, 1959, the anthracite fields of the Wyoming Valley met their reckoning when the Knox Coal Company's illegal mining beneath the Susquehanna River breached the riverbed. More than ten billion gallons of icy water poured into the workings, killing twelve men and effectively ending deep mining across much of the valley.

Mahoning Township, PA · est. 1948

The Kuskuskies Towns were a cluster of Native villages that once stood along the Shenango and Beaver rivers near present-day New Castle. This marker recalls the last of them, still occupied in 1785 when Gen. William Irvine surveyed the surrounding 'Donation Lands' — tracts the state set aside as bounties for its Revolutionary War soldiers. His tour came just as the old Indian country was about to be carved up and handed to veterans, a quiet hinge between two worlds.

Taylor Township, PA · est. 1948

The Kuskuskies Towns were an important group of Native villages on and near the site of present-day New Castle. First home to the Seneca, after about 1756 they were settled chiefly by Delaware (Lenape) migrating westward from eastern Pennsylvania under mounting colonial pressure. The towns remained a significant Indian center until they were abandoned during the upheavals of the Revolutionary War.

Franklin Park, PA · est. 2008

Long before paved roads crossed western Pennsylvania, a network of Native American trails threaded the forests, and the Kuskusky Path was one of the busiest. Through most of the 1700s it carried hunters, traders, warriors, war captives, and diplomats between the great confluence at Fort Duquesne/Fort Pitt and the Delaware (Lenape) town of Kuskusky, at today's New Castle. As European settlers pushed in, they raised homes and churches right alongside the old trace, layering a new world atop an Indigenous one.

Scranton, PA · est. 1982

The last of Pennsylvania's 67 counties, Lackawanna was carved from Luzerne County in 1878, its name drawn from a Native word for a forking stream. Its heart was Scranton, a city that rose on the black wealth beneath it: hard anthracite coal. By the late nineteenth century the region had become, by its own proud claim, the anthracite mining capital of the world, drawing waves of immigrant laborers into its collieries and coal towns.

Scranton, PA · est. 1947

Long before Scranton was a city, iron was already being forged in the woods of Slocum Hollow as early as 1797. In 1840 the Scranton family and their partners launched the works that became the Lackawanna Iron Company, and in 1847 the furnaces here rolled iron rails for the Erie Railroad — helping tie together the nation's booming rail network. The company added steelmaking in 1875, riding the Gilded Age industrial surge, before the operation finally closed in 1902.

Whitemarsh Township, PA · est. 1980

In May 1778, the young Marquis de Lafayette led 2,000 Continental troops to Barren Hill on his first independent command, scouting British movements out of Philadelphia. General Howe tried to trap him with an overwhelming force, but Lafayette skillfully extracted his men and slipped back toward the American camp. He reoccupied the position until his recall to Valley Forge on May 23, having passed a crucial early test of his generalship.

Bethlehem, PA · est. 1987

After the young Marquis de Lafayette was wounded in the leg at the Battle of Brandywine in 1777, he was brought to Bethlehem to recover. Here he convalesced at the home of George Frederick Beckel, superintendent of the Moravian community's farm, while the Continental Army fought on nearby. The Beckel house stood for over a century afterward, from 1762 to 1872.

Easton, PA · est. 2007

On December 27, 1824, citizens of Easton gathered at White's Hotel to found a new college, naming it for the Marquis de Lafayette. The timing was no accident: the aging French general was then in the midst of his triumphant 1824–25 tour of the United States, a journey that rekindled patriotic memories of the Revolution he had helped win. Local leader James Madison Porter, who had recently met Lafayette, helped rally support for the school that became one of the nation's foremost tributes to the statesman.

Easton, PA · est. 2015

First contested in 1884 on the Lafayette College campus in Easton, the football game between Lafayette and Lehigh grew into a fierce cross-valley tradition. The two schools have met more than 150 times, and the NCAA recognizes their series as the most-played rivalry in college football. The matchup has drawn coverage from Sports Illustrated, the New York Times, and ESPN.

Lancaster, PA · est. 1982

One of Pennsylvania's oldest counties, Lancaster was formed in 1729 and named for Lancashire in England, reflecting the mix of British, German, and other settlers who made it home. The county seat grew into an important inland town and briefly served as the state capital from 1799 to 1812. Its deep, well-watered soils became some of the most productive farmland in America, worked by a patchwork of ethnic and religious communities including the Pennsylvania Germans.

Mercersburg, PA · est. 1953

In this Mercersburg house in 1830, Harriet Lane was born into the family that would give her uncle, James Buchanan, a lifelong companion in public life. Orphaned young, she was raised by Buchanan and later served as his official White House hostess during his presidency—an era when a bachelor president needed a "first lady" at his side. Poised and popular, she became one of the most admired women in Washington.

Middletown Township, PA · est. 2006

When Langhorne Speedway opened in 1926, its perfectly circular one-mile dirt oval was unlike anything else in American racing, earning the fearsome nickname the "Big Left Turn." For nearly half a century its turns tested the greatest names in the sport, from Lee Petty and A.J. Foyt to Mario Andretti, and it hosted racing across stock, midget, sprint, and Indy classes. Reshaped and paved in 1965, the track finally fell silent after its last race in 1971.

Ayr Township, PA · est. 2021

In the summer of 1864, Confederate cavalry under General Bradley T. Johnson camped on this ground on July 31, just after McCausland's raiders had burned Chambersburg in retaliation for Union destruction in the Shenandoah Valley. They proved to be the last Confederate troops ever to camp on Pennsylvania soil. Union cavalry under General William W. Averell gave chase and routed the raiders a week later at the Battle of Moorefield in West Virginia.

Hazle Township, PA · est. 1972

On September 10, 1897, hundreds of unarmed immigrant coal miners marched near Hazleton to demand fairer wages and working conditions in the anthracite fields. Sheriff's deputies opened fire on the strikers, killing nineteen and wounding dozens more, most of them recent Eastern European immigrants. The bloodshed shocked the nation and became a rallying point for the growing labor movement and the United Mine Workers.

Hazle Township, PA · est. 1997

On September 10, 1897, a group of unarmed immigrant coal miners—Polish, Slovak, and Lithuanian—marched from Harwood toward Lattimer demanding higher pay and fair treatment. Sheriff's deputies opened fire on the peaceful column, killing nineteen and wounding many more. The dead were laid to rest in the ethnic parish cemeteries around Hazleton, and the massacre became a rallying cry for the growing labor movement in the anthracite fields.

West Pennsboro Township, PA · est. 1947

Built around 1763 on the waters of the Cumberland Valley, Laughlin Mill ground the grain of local farmers and stayed in its founding family's hands for well over a century. Grist mills like this were the beating heart of frontier settlements, the place where a farmer's harvest became flour and a community gathered. Preserved rather than lost, it survives as the oldest such structure in the region.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1992

Laura Wheeler Waring built her career as a portrait painter in an era when few Black women found a place in the American art world. Trained in Philadelphia and in France, she captured the faces of leading African Americans and led the art department at Cheyney State College, shaping generations of students. Her portraits now hang in the National Portrait Gallery and other major collections.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2000

Founded in 1836 on a bluff above the Schuylkill River, Laurel Hill was the nation's second major rural cemetery, laid out by the Scottish-born architect John Notman. Its winding drives, ornamental plantings, and eclectic monuments made it as much a landscaped park as a burial ground, offering city dwellers a romantic escape from crowded, unhealthy urban churchyards. By 1861 it had grown to 78 acres, and Philadelphians came to stroll its grounds long before the city had public parks. It was named a National Historic Landmark in 1998.

Jefferson Township, PA · est. 2021

Laurel Hill was one of five Recreational Demonstration Areas the National Park Service created in Depression-era Pennsylvania to reclaim worn land for public use. Between 1935 and 1941, workers from the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration built the roads, cabins, and facilities that turned the site into a place for recreation. Today it is the most intact RDA in the state, still holding examples of every kind of structure the New Deal builders left behind.

New Castle, PA · est. 1982

Created in 1849 from parts of Beaver and Mercer counties, Lawrence County honors Capt. James Lawrence, the naval hero of the War of 1812 remembered for the dying cry "Don't give up the ship." Its county seat, New Castle, had been laid out decades earlier, but the town's real boom came around the turn of the twentieth century, when it exploded as a center of the American tin-plate industry. For a generation it ranked among the fastest-growing cities in the nation.

Hickory Township, PA · est. 1947

At the mission the Delaware called Lawunakhannek — "northerly stream place" — the Moravian missionary David Zeisberger and his Native converts raised what is remembered as the first Protestant church building west of the Allegheny Mountains in 1769. Moravian missions like this one gathered Delaware and other Native peoples into small Christian communities along the frontier rivers. The name itself preserves the Delaware language mapping of this stretch of the Allegheny.

Tinicum Township, PA · est. 2008

Established in 1799 after a devastating yellow fever epidemic, the Lazaretto stood as Philadelphia's line of defense against imported disease. For nearly a century, ships bound for the port stopped here first so that cargo could be inspected or fumigated and passengers examined; the sick were hospitalized and held until they recovered — or died. For countless arriving immigrants, this quarantine station was their very first taste of America.

Logan Township, PA · est. 2000

Built in 1902 by Philadelphia's E. Joy Morris, Leap-The-Dips is a side-friction figure-eight coaster from the dawn of the American amusement-park era, when hundreds of such wooden rides thrilled crowds at trolley parks nationwide. As tastes changed and the others were torn down, this one at Lakemont Park endured to become the last of its kind and the world's oldest known operating roller coaster. It carries National Historic Landmark status.

Lebanon, PA · est. 1982

Lebanon County was organized in 1813 from parts of Dauphin and Lancaster counties, though the community here reached back much further — its township dated to 1729 and the town of Lebanon to around 1740. Settled largely by Pennsylvania Germans, the area grew into a landscape of prosperous farms and closely held religious traditions. That blend of rich agriculture and faith gave the county an enduring identity rooted in its early settlers' values.

Union Township, PA · est. 1947

On August 16, 1782, Major John Lee and his family were killed near this place in a raid by an Indian war party, with only his son Robert surviving. The attack came during the violent final years of the Revolutionary War on the Pennsylvania frontier, when British-allied raids terrorized isolated valley settlements. Such tragedies were a grim feature of life on the contested edge of the new nation.

Leechburg, PA

In the prosperous years after World War I, the industrial river town of Leechburg invested in a grand new schoolhouse to match its growing ambitions. Designed by New Castle architect W.G. Eckels and raised between 1922 and 1924, the building wore the dignified columns and symmetry of the Classical Revival style then favored for civic landmarks across America. Opened with 23 classrooms and dedicated that September of 1924, it became the educational heart of the Leechburg Area School District.

Leechburg, PA

This blue-and-gold cast-iron sign is one of Pennsylvania's Keystone Markers, a statewide series from the early twentieth century that fixed the identity and origin of towns along the roadside. Leechburg took its name from David Leech, an enterprising figure of the early republic who developed the settlement on the Kiskiminetas River in the era when the Pennsylvania Canal threaded freight and passengers through the state's interior. A canal town by birth, it later grew into a busy iron and tin manufacturing community as industry followed the water and rail routes west.

Harmony Township, PA · est. 1946

Through the winter of 1792-93, General Anthony Wayne drilled the newly formed Legion of the United States at this camp on the Ohio, turning raw recruits into a disciplined fighting force. The training paid off in 1794 when Wayne's army defeated a Native confederacy at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, breaking Indigenous resistance in the Northwest Territory. Legionville is remembered as one of the first formal basic-training encampments in American military history.

Allentown, PA

Carved from Northampton County in March 1812 and named for the river that powered its early industry, Lehigh County anchored the Pennsylvania German heartland around Allentown. Its ground had already earned a place in Revolutionary lore: when the British occupied Philadelphia in 1777-1778, patriots spirited the State House Bell — later called the Liberty Bell — to Allentown, hiding it beneath the floor of Zion Reformed Church. The county was also home to George Taylor, one of Pennsylvania's signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Dennison Township, PA · est. 2001

Long before roads crossed these mountains, a Native American footpath threaded through this rugged country, one strand in a network of trails linking villages of the Delaware and Susquehanna watersheds. The Lehigh Path ran from the Forks of the Delaware near present-day Easton northwestward to the Wyoming Valley on the Susquehanna near Wilkes-Barre. The Lenni-Lenape and Susquehannock traveled its steep grades until roughly 1800, when European settlement finally displaced the old ways of moving through the land.