Historic Markers in Pennsylvania

Taylor, PA · est. 1948

Before 1800, Ebenezer Slocum built one of the first homes in the area and produced the valley's earliest iron. The community owed its name and growth to George W. Scranton and his associates, who from its 1840 founding drove it to national leadership in iron and steel for sixty years. A modest frontier forge became the cornerstone of a major American industrial city.

Scranton, PA · est. 1951

Iron-making began on this ground before 1800, when Ebenezer Slocum built the area's first house and forged its first iron. But the settlement's true rise came with George W. Scranton and his associates, whose ironworks after 1840 turned the place into a booming industrial city that bore his name. For six decades Scranton stood among the nation's leaders in iron and steel.

Ellwood City, PA · est. 1994

In 1895, Swiss-born engineer Ralph C. Stiefel worked out the rotary piercing process at a plant in Ellwood City — a way to punch and roll a solid steel billet into seamless tubing without a welded seam. The breakthrough helped launch the Ellwood Weldless Tube Company, which grew into a core piece of U.S. Steel's National Tube Division.

Menallen Township, PA · est. 1966

This stone tollhouse was raised in 1835 to collect fees from travelers on the National Road, America's first federally funded highway, which stretched from Maryland toward the Ohio Valley. By the 1830s the road had passed to state control, and Pennsylvania built distinctive hexagonal tollhouses like this one to fund upkeep. Wagons, stagecoaches, and droves of livestock all paused here to pay before rolling west.

Upper Darby, PA · est. 1985

Built around 1684, Sellers Hall was the first permanent home in Upper Darby, raised by Samuel Sellers and his bride Anna Gibbons in the earliest days of Penn's colony. The family became famous for its bent toward mechanics and science across generations. One son, John Sellers, helped found the American Philosophical Society and in 1769 joined the celebrated observation of Venus crossing the face of the sun.

Norristown, PA · est. 1949

Selma was the home of Andrew Porter, a general of the Revolution, but it is best remembered as the birthplace of his remarkable sons. David R. Porter became governor of Pennsylvania from 1839 to 1845; James M. Porter served as U.S. Secretary of War in 1843; and George B. Porter was governor of Michigan Territory from 1831 to 1834. From one Montgomery County household came a striking concentration of public service in the early republic.

Glade Township, PA · est. 2007

Long before roads crossed this country, an eight-mile footpath linked Conewango Creek to the upper Allegheny River, sparing travelers the grueling 26-mile trip upstream to the heart of the Seneca Nation. Generations of Seneca people, French explorers, and later Revolutionary War soldiers all wore this portage smooth, its lower branches converging near this midpoint before the route continued on toward Kinzua. It was a highway of the wilderness, connecting waterways and peoples across northwestern Pennsylvania.

Kane, PA · est. 1951

A spring just southwest of here marked a resting place on one of the great Native footpaths that laced the eastern woodlands long before European roads. This trail crossed the high plateau known as the Big Level and formed part of the main artery linking Onondaga — the political heart of the Iroquois Confederacy — with the Ohio country and the distant Carolinas. Travelers, traders, and war parties alike relied on such springs to break the journey.

Plymouth, PA · est. 1992

In the coal town of Plymouth, Sephaniah Reese built and drove a three-wheeled, one-cylinder motor vehicle on the streets in 1887–88, making him one of America's earliest automobile experimenters. His machine shop, incorporated in 1888, was also an early bicycle manufacturer. The firm remained a fixture here for more than eighty years.

Scranton, PA

This memorial remembers the innocent victims and the heroes of September 11, 2001, with special honor to those tied to Lackawanna County. Among them are county native Laura Lee (DeFazio) Marabito, a passenger aboard American Airlines Flight 11; Jerry Moran, Jr., who died at the Pentagon; and Daniel Christian Schaufler, a paramedic who volunteered at Ground Zero. Their names bind a small Pennsylvania region to the national tragedy of that day.

Franklin, PA · est. 1986

Born in Czechoslovakia and raised in the coal-country borough of Franklin, Michael Strank became a Marine sergeant in the Pacific war. On February 23, 1945, he was the oldest and senior man among the six who raised the flag atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima — the moment Joe Rosenthal's camera froze into one of the most famous images in American history. Strank was killed in action days later and now rests at Arlington, his likeness cast into the Marine Corps War Memorial.

Pittsburgh, PA · est. 1958

On these Monongahela lowlands in 1792, just as the young republic was pushing industry west of the Alleghenies, a small charcoal-fired furnace began casting stoves and grates. It is remembered as the first stirring of what would become Pittsburgh's defining trade. The venture proved fragile, though: within roughly a year the nearby supplies of iron ore and hardwood for charcoal ran short and the fire went cold.

Philadelphia, PA

The words come from Shakespeare's As You Like It, spoken by the melancholy Jaques as he begins the celebrated "Seven Ages of Man" speech — the conceit that every human life moves through set roles, from squalling infant to old age. This monument stands in Philadelphia, a city that long embraced Shakespeare on its stages and in its great libraries, honoring the English playwright whose work became a cornerstone of American theater and schooling. Civic tributes to Shakespeare like this one flourished in American cities in the early twentieth century, when leaders adorned parks and cultural institutions with monuments to the literary canon.

Pittsburgh, PA · est. 1958

Before Pittsburgh existed, a Delaware (Lenape) community stood on this ground from about 1731 until the French moved into the region in 1754. It sat at the Allegheny River end of the Raystown Path, an Indian and traders' route running from Carlisle out to the western country. In an era when rivers and footpaths were the highways of the continent, this was a hub of Native trade and travel at the strategic forks of the Ohio.

Schellsburg, PA · est. 1947

In the early 1700s the Shawnee were a mobile people pushed and pulled across the mid-Atlantic backcountry by war, trade, and colonial pressure. A band of them paused at this village site along the Raystown Path—one of the great Indian trails threading Pennsylvania's ridges—while withdrawing from the Potomac country toward the lower Allegheny Valley. The place name preserved the memory of that passage long after they had gone.

Plymouth, PA · est. 2003

As the Revolution began, the Continental Congress ordered a chain of frontier forts to shield settlers in the contested Wyoming Valley, and Shawnee Fort was one of them. It guarded Connecticut-backed Yankee settlers — both from British-allied raiders and from Pennsylvanians who claimed the same lands — and served as the garrison of Capt. Samuel Ransom's company, which fought under Washington. Burned after the bloody Battle of Wyoming in 1778 and rebuilt, it was finally swept away by a flood in 1784.

Smithfield Township, PA · est. 2010

Near where the Brodhead Creek meets the Delaware River, the Shawnee-Minisink site preserves traces of some of the earliest known people in the northeastern United States — campfires, hundreds of stone tools, and the remains of fish and fruit left nearly 13,000 years ago. These finds surprised archaeologists, revealing that late Ice Age inhabitants ate a more varied diet than the big-game-hunter image long suggested. The site is a touchstone for understanding the first Americans in the region.

Shenango Township, PA · est. 1947

For roughly a generation in the mid-eighteenth century, a village of Wyandot and Delaware people stood on the nearby riverbanks. It lay within the sphere of the Seneca, the westernmost nation of the Iroquois Confederacy, whose influence over the upper Ohio country was then at its height. A few Seneca bands lingered in the region into the early 1800s before the tide of white settlement pushed them west.

West Manheim Township, PA

In the rolling farm country just outside Hanover, this plaque marks a reservoir built to secure a growing community's water supply. It credits two local benefactors, H.D. Sheppard and C.N. Myers, whose names were well known in the Hanover area's business and civic life around the turn of the 20th century. The Borough Council set the tablet not to mark a battle or a birth, but to thank two neighbors whose generosity turned a public need into a public work.

East Union Township, PA · est. 2015

On August 27, 1963, a shaft collapse trapped coal miners some 320 feet beneath Sheppton, and the nation held its breath as rescuers improvised a bold new approach. Drilling a borehole to reach the men below, they freed two miners after nearly two weeks underground, though a third was lost. The gripping ordeal spurred tougher safety rules for small independent mines and pioneered a rescue technique later credited with saving lives at Quecreek in 2002 and in Chile in 2010.

North Towanda Township, PA · est. 1948

The Sheshequin Path was a Native trail linking the Iroquois homelands of the north with the important Indigenous town of Shamokin to the south. Along this route the colonial interpreter and diplomat Conrad Weiser traveled to Onondaga, the capital of the Iroquois Confederacy, to represent Pennsylvania in council with the Six Nations. Weiser's journeys over such paths helped keep an uneasy peace between the colony and the powerful League.

Lewis Township, PA · est. 1949

Long before roads crossed these mountains, the Sheshequin Path threaded the wilderness as a branch of the great Warriors Path, offering a shortcut from Tioga to the Great Island on the Susquehanna. The route climbed through the tangled valley of Lycoming Creek—dense forest, swamp, windfall, and storm—country so forbidding that Indigenous travelers spoke of a demon holding power there. It was one of the vital corridors of the Six Nations' world in the Pennsylvania interior.

Lewis Township, PA · est. 1949

In 1743 the frontier diplomat Conrad Weiser followed the Sheshequin Path up Lycoming Creek toward the Onondaga council fire, the seat of the Six Nations' confederacy. He traveled on a peace mission for Virginia, in the vivid diplomatic language of the day to "take the hatchet out of the head" of the Iroquois. With him went mapmaker Lewis Evans and the pioneering botanist John Bartram, whose journey became a famous early record of the Pennsylvania backcountry.

McIntyre Township, PA · est. 1949

In 1745 the Moravian bishop Augustus Spangenberg passed through this valley along the Sheshequin Path on his way to the Onondaga council of the Six Nations. He left a memorable description of woods so thick that "one does not see the sun all day," hemmed in by mountains that pressed close as ant hills. His journey was part of the Moravians' remarkable engagement with the Native peoples of the Pennsylvania frontier.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1997

Opened in 1909 and later renamed Connie Mack Stadium, this North Philadelphia ballpark was among the country's first steel-and-concrete major league parks and a pioneer of night baseball. It was home to the Athletics and, later, the Phillies, hosting five A's World Series titles and three Negro League World Series. Long after the crowds moved on, the storied grounds were razed in 1976.

Sunbury, PA · est. 1947

Shikellamy was an Oneida leader who served as the Six Nations' overseer on the Susquehanna, managing the Iroquois Confederacy's authority over the Delaware and other peoples displaced into the region. From about 1728 until his death in 1748 he lived at the important Native town of Shamokin, on the site of present-day Sunbury, a hub of diplomacy between Native nations and colonial Pennsylvania.

Sunbury, PA · est. 1915

This memorial honors Shikellamy — also called Swataney, 'Our Enlightener' — the Oneida leader the Iroquois Confederacy sent to oversee the Susquehanna peoples from Shamokin, on the site of present-day Sunbury. First stationed here in 1728 and named vice-gerent in 1745, he became a skilled diplomat who kept the peace between the Six Nations and colonial Pennsylvania until his death in 1758. He was buried near this spot, remembered as a steadfast friend of the province.

Kelly Township, PA · est. 1921

On the plain below this ridge once stood the town of Shikellamy, the seasoned Iroquois leader who served as the Confederacy's overseer of the tributary peoples along the Susquehanna. The Pennsylvania interpreter Conrad Weiser passed through here in 1737 on one of his diplomatic journeys to the Iroquois council at Onondaga. In 1745 Shikellamy was named vice-regent of the Confederacy and made his headquarters downriver at Shamokin, today's Sunbury.

West Chillisquaque Township, PA · est. 1947

Before making Shamokin his main seat, the Oneida leader Shikellamy kept an earlier residence near this spot. As the Six Nations' vice-regent over the Delaware and other refugee peoples, he spent most of the years 1728 to 1748 governing Native affairs along the Susquehanna until his death at Shamokin, now Sunbury.

Lancaster, PA · est. 1950

Edward Shippen was one of colonial Lancaster's leading citizens, a lawyer and judge who chaired the local Committee of Observation as the Revolution approached. His home stood here for three decades in the mid-1700s, an era when Lancaster was among the largest inland towns in the colonies. He is remembered too as grandfather of Peggy Shippen, who married Benedict Arnold and became entangled in the most infamous treason of the war.

Shippensburg Township, PA · est. 1948

Edward Shippen laid out Shippensburg in 1730, planting one of the earliest English towns west of the Susquehanna River on what was then the raw edge of colonial Pennsylvania. As settlement pushed inland, the town became an important stopping point on the frontier and briefly served as the seat of newly formed Cumberland County, hosting its first courts in 1750-51 before the seat moved on. Second only to Carlisle in age among towns in the region, it anchored the advance of settlers into the Cumberland Valley.

Southampton Township, PA · est. 1948

Founded in 1730 by Edward Shippen, this settlement became one of the earliest towns on Pennsylvania's colonial frontier and the second oldest west of the Susquehanna River. Its importance was such that when Cumberland County was organized, its first courts convened here in 1750-51 before a permanent seat was chosen. For early travelers and traders, Shippensburg was a vital waypoint on the edge of European settlement.

Shippensburg, PA · est. 1925

Settled about 1733, this Cumberland Valley town was laid out and named for Edward Shippen, a Philadelphia merchant and mayor who later served as a paymaster in the Forbes Expedition against Fort Duquesne and helped found what became Princeton University. He came from a prominent colonial family; his grandfather of the same name had hosted William Penn and risen to chief justice of Pennsylvania. The town grew as a frontier gateway into the valley beyond.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1997

Built in 1808 by Thomas Sparks and John Bishop, this was the first shot tower in the United States, where molten lead was dropped from a great height to form perfectly round hunting shot as it cooled. When the works began producing ammunition for the War of 1812, Bishop, a Quaker opposed to war, sold his share. The Sparks family kept the tower in operation until 1903.

Crescent Township, PA

Along the Ohio River just below Pittsburgh, Peter Shouse launched the steamboat "Kentuckian" here in 1829, founding a boatyard that would become one of the region's busiest. Western Pennsylvania sat at the heart of America's steamboat age, where fast-flowing rivers and abundant coal and timber turned river towns into shipbuilding hubs feeding the Ohio and Mississippi trade. Over the next four decades the yard sent more than eighty vessels down the ways, culminating in the mighty 1,727-ton "Great Republic," celebrated on the Mississippi for its size and elegance.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1994

From an optical shop on this block in 1897, Siegmund Lubin built one of America's first great motion-picture empires — six studios across five states — earning fame as the first movie mogul. A tinkerer and shrewd marketer, he helped turn flickering novelties into a popular entertainment that drew ordinary Americans into darkened theaters. The industry he helped create outgrew him; bankrupt by 1916, he died in obscurity.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2007

In the backyard of his Philadelphia home, film pioneer Siegmund Lubin made some of the nation's earliest motion pictures between 1897 and 1899. His subjects were the popular entertainments of the day — vaudeville and burlesque acts, boxing matches, circus and animal performers, even a filmed Passion Play. A German-Jewish immigrant and optician by trade, Lubin became an early force in the emerging American movie business.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2015

When engineer Joseph Tarsia opened Sigma Sound Studios in 1968, he gave a home to what became known worldwide as "The Sound of Philadelphia." Working with producers Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff, and Thom Bell, the studio's lush, string-swept records by The O'Jays, the Stylistics, and others helped define soul music in the 1970s. Its reputation for sonic craft grew so large that artists like David Bowie and Stevie Wonder made pilgrimages to record within its walls.

Cumberland Township, PA

This memorial tablet honors the U.S. Signal Corps for its service at Little Round Top on July 2–4, 1863, and across the battlefields of the Civil War. From the heights, signal officers used flags to relay observations of enemy movements, giving Union commanders a crucial view of the field. The Signal Corps was then a young branch, and Gettysburg showcased the value of rapid battlefield communication.

Silver Spring Township, PA · est. 1947

Among the very first Europeans to push into the Cumberland Valley were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, who in 1734 gathered a congregation on land held by James Silver. The stone church that still stands was raised in 1783, in the hopeful early years of American independence, and was carefully restored in 1928 to its 18th-century form. Nearly three centuries on, worship continues on the same ground.

East Donegal Township, PA · est. 1951

Simon Cameron was born in 1799 in a log house that once stood on this site, rising from modest beginnings to become one of the most powerful figures in Pennsylvania and national politics. A U.S. Senator and shrewd party organizer, he served briefly as Abraham Lincoln's first Secretary of War at the outbreak of the Civil War before a diplomatic posting to Russia. He died in 1889 at nearby Donegal Springs, having shaped his state's political machine for a generation.

Susquehanna Township, PA · est. 2001

Born near this spot, Simon Girty became one of the American frontier's most divisive figures. Captured by Native forces in 1756 as a boy, he spent years among the Senecas, mastering their language and ways, and later served the American army as an interpreter before deserting in 1778. Thereafter he led British and allied Native war parties against frontier settlements and remained hostile to the United States through the War of 1812, dying in exile in Canada.

Pittsburgh, PA · est. 2017

Born near Harrisburg, Simon Girty was captured and adopted by the Seneca as a teenager in 1756, and he came to move fluidly between Native and colonial worlds. He worked as an interpreter at Fort Pitt before defecting to the British in 1778, after which he advised and accompanied Native war parties in raids on frontier settlements during the Revolution. Reviled by many American settlers, he remains a deeply contested figure and is buried in Canada.

Selinsgrove, PA · est. 1947

In the young republic's early decades, Selinsgrove sent one of its own to the highest office in Pennsylvania. Simon Snyder rose from the General Assembly to serve three terms as governor from 1808 to 1817, the first man of German descent to hold the post in a commonwealth shaped heavily by its German-speaking communities. The home he built here in the early 1800s remained his residence until his death, and he was laid to rest in the nearby Lutheran churchyard.

Penn Township, PA · est. 1947

Simon Snyder made Selinsgrove his home through the years he governed Pennsylvania, serving three terms from 1808 to 1817 after a decade in the state Assembly. His Market Street house still stood when this marker was raised, a tangible link to a governor who lived and died among the neighbors he represented. He passed away there in 1819 and was buried in the First Lutheran Church cemetery.

Lancaster, PA · est. 1950

Simon Snyder was born here in 1759 and rose from humble beginnings to serve three terms as governor of Pennsylvania, from 1808 to 1817. A champion of the common citizen in the Jeffersonian mold, he pressed for a strong defense and sound money during the War of 1812. His long tenure made him one of the defining figures of Pennsylvania's early statehood.

Mechanicsburg, PA · est. 1954

Laid out around 1792, Simpson Ferry Road ran from Michael Simpson's ferry crossing on the Susquehanna River inland toward Carlisle, tracing at this point a route later remembered as Simpson Street. In the young republic it was a vital artery for settlers and travelers pushing toward the western part of the state.

Lumber Township, PA · est. 1950

Long before roads followed these ridges, Native travelers wore a path up the Sinnemahoning Creek valley, reaching Canoe Place — today's Emporium Junction — and continuing to the Seneca towns at the Big Bend of the Allegheny. Such trails were the region's highways, threading through mountains along the easiest grades. Early settlers pushing into Clinton, McKean, Cameron, and Potter Counties followed the very route the Seneca and their neighbors had established.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2011

Sister Rosetta Tharpe rose to fame in the 1930s and 1940s as one of gospel music's first true crossover stars, electrifying audiences with a guitar style and stage presence far ahead of her time. Blending sacred song with the swing and showmanship of secular music, she shared stages with jazz titans like Count Basie, Cab Calloway, and Benny Goodman across America and Europe. Her home once stood here in Philadelphia, a city long central to Black musical life.

Greensburg, PA · est. 2021

In 1870 Mother Aloysia Lowe and a small band of companions came from Cincinnati to found the Sisters of Charity of Seton Hill, making Greensburg their permanent home in 1882. Rooted in the tradition of Elizabeth Ann Seton, the sisters built a far-reaching ministry of teaching and healing, serving scores of schools and hospitals across a dozen states. In 1918 they founded Seton Hill College — now a university — and by 1960 had carried their mission overseas to Korea.

Pittsburgh, PA · est. 1993

In December 1843, Frances Ward and six fellow Sisters of Mercy arrived from Carlow, Ireland, and opened the first convent of their order in the United States on this Pittsburgh ground. In a growing industrial city crowded with poor and immigrant families, the sisters set to work at once teaching, nursing the sick, and caring for the destitute. From this modest beginning, Mercy convents and their schools and hospitals spread across the nation.

Baden, PA · est. 2024

Tracing their origins to Le Puy, France, the Sisters of St. Joseph established a convent in Ebensburg in 1869 and moved their motherhouse to Baden in 1901. For generations they served Pennsylvania and beyond through schools, hospitals, and social welfare work, and sent missionaries abroad, including to China from 1926 to 1948. In 1894 the order found itself at the center of a public controversy over sisters wearing their religious habits while teaching in a public school.

Bethlehem, PA · est. 1953

Built in 1744 and first used as a Brothers' House, this Bethlehem building soon became home to the Moravian community's unmarried women, who lived and worked here practicing the arts and crafts assigned to the sisterhood. In 1778, during the Revolutionary War, the sisters stitched the banner carried by Casimir Pulaski's cavalry legion—a piece of needlework later immortalized in American memory. The Single Sisters' choir was a distinctive feature of Moravian communal life, giving women a defined economic and spiritual role.

Reading, PA · est. 1951

By the 1850s Pennsylvania was crisscrossed with railroads hungry for engineering that could carry tracks over roads and streams at awkward angles. A skew bridge solves that problem by setting its arch on a slant, forcing every stone to be cut on a precise spiral so the whole span holds without a central keystone. Designed by Richard Osborn for the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad in 1857, this stone arch was long admired as one of the finest examples of the form in the country.

Bangor, PA · est. 1947

When Welsh immigrant Robert M. Jones arrived in 1848, he opened the first slate quarries around Bangor, drawing on skills carried from the slate country of Wales. The industry boomed, and the region became one of the world's leading producers of slate for roofing and for the writing slates and pencils once found in every schoolhouse. Waves of Welsh workers followed, giving the area a distinct heritage that endured for generations.

Slatington, PA · est. 2002

The region around Slatington grew into one of the largest slate-producing centers in the United States after Welsh entrepreneur William Roberts spotted slate near a local barn in 1844. He and fellow Welsh immigrants opened a cluster of quarries, including the vast "Big Franklin" and the "Williams" quarry famous for making school slates. Their work helped fuel the popularity of slate roofing across America in the later 19th century.

Upper Mount Bethel Township, PA · est. 1951

At Slateford in 1808, a chartered company launched one of the earliest efforts to quarry slate in the United States, tapping the rich seams of the Lehigh Valley. Over the following century, quarries and slate mills in this vicinity turned local stone into roofing and building material, keeping their works running until 1917. The venture helped pioneer an industry that would make eastern Pennsylvania a national center of slate production.

Smethport, PA · est. 1949

Smethport has served as the seat of McKean County since 1807, when land agent Francis King laid out its town lots amid the northern Pennsylvania wilderness. Growth came slowly on this rugged frontier: Arnold Hunter raised the first cabin in 1811, but lasting settlement waited until 1822, and the first courthouse rose in 1827. The town's steady establishment reflects the patient, hard-won process of settling the region.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2017

Opened in 1899 with a gift from Richard and Sarah Smith "for the recreation of the young," this Fairmount Park playground was a private benefaction placed on public land — free and open to every child. It arrived at the dawn of the American Playground Movement, when reformers argued that supervised, purpose-built play spaces could nurture healthy, well-rounded citizens. It stands as one of the earliest dedicated children's play spaces in the United States.

Smithfield Township, PA · est. 2000

In the mid-1700s the Dutch families who had settled this region raised a simple log meetinghouse, said to be the first of four early churches they built. It sheltered a Dutch Reformed congregation until roughly 1752, when the worshippers moved to the Old Stone Church at Shawnee. In an age when the church was the heart of frontier community life, this humble structure anchored the faith of one of the region's earliest European settlements.