Historic Markers in Pennsylvania

Tinicum Township, PA · est. 1947

In 1643 Colonel Johan Printz, the imposing governor of New Sweden, established his seat at Tinicum, founding what is recognized as the first permanent European settlement in present-day Pennsylvania. For a dozen years the Swedish colony held this ground along the Delaware, until the wider contest for the river swept it away — first to the Dutch in 1655, then to the English in 1664. Tinicum's brief Swedish chapter left a lasting mark on the region's earliest colonial identity.

Wellsboro, PA · est. 1982

Organized in 1804 from Lycoming County, Tioga County drew its name from an Indigenous word meaning the forks of a stream, carried by the Tioga River. Wellsboro, laid out in 1806, became the county seat. Along Pine Creek the land drops into a deep gorge known as Pennsylvania's Grand Canyon.

Titusville, PA · est. 1999

As Pennsylvania's oil boom matured, producers, refiners, dealers, and brokers organized the industry's first permanent oil exchange in Titusville in 1871, beginning in the American Hotel on this spot. The exchange gave the young petroleum trade a formal marketplace, moving among sites before returning to a new three-story brick building here in 1881. It was dissolved in 1897, and the building was torn down in 1956.

Menallen Township, PA · est. 1947

This toll house is one of six original gatehouses built along the Cumberland Road — the great National Road that was the first federally funded highway in the United States, pushing west across the Appalachians toward the Ohio country. The roadway was completed through this section of Fayette County in 1817–18, and when the federal government handed the road over to Pennsylvania in 1835, the state built these toll houses to collect the fees that would maintain it. Travelers, freight wagons, and Conestoga teams once paused here to pay their way west.

Addison Township, PA · est. 1947

When the federal government handed the National Road over to the states in 1835, tolls became the means of paying for its upkeep, and small toll houses sprang up to collect from passing traffic. The one recalled here was among just six original toll houses on the Cumberland Road, standing on the hill opposite to gather fees from the wagons and stagecoaches rolling west. Preserved and restored by the Daughters of the American Revolution, it survives as a reminder of the road's toll-keeping days.

Greensburg, PA · est. 1955

Before public highways, long-distance roads were built and maintained by private turnpike companies that recouped their costs at tollgates. This spot held the toll house of the Stoyestown-Greensburg Turnpike, part of the vital Philadelphia-to-Pittsburgh road completed in 1819 at the then-steep price of roughly $6,000 a mile. Travelers, drovers, and freight wagons paid their way west here for nearly a century, until the state finally took the road over in 1911.

Hempfield Township, PA · est. 1955

Crossing the mountains between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh once meant passing through a series of tollgates run by private turnpike companies. Just northeast of here stood one of five gates on the Greensburg-Pittsburgh Turnpike, completed in 1817 as a link in that great east-west road. Over its surface rolled the wagons of goods exchanged between the seaboard and the growing settlements of the Ohio Valley.

Gibson Township, PA · est. 1955

Tom Mix, born in this corner of Pennsylvania on January 6, 1880, became one of Hollywood's first great Western stars. After service as a soldier during the Spanish-American War, he rode to fame in hundreds of silent and sound films between 1910 and 1935, defining the movie cowboy for a generation. He died in an Arizona auto accident in 1940.

Harris Township, PA

Pennsylvania's Mid State Trail runs for well over a hundred miles along the ridges and valleys of the state's central highlands, and this footpath honors the man who dreamed it into being. Tom Thwaites, a longtime advocate for hiking and the outdoors, laid out and championed the route in the later twentieth century, then rallied an army of volunteers to clear, blaze, and maintain it. The dedication captures a quieter kind of history: not a battle or a statesman, but the patient, unpaid labor that stitches a wilderness path across a whole state.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2002

As the First World War drew to a close in October 1918, the scholar-statesman Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk gathered delegates from a dozen Central and Eastern European peoples at Philadelphia's Independence Hall — the very birthplace of American independence — to proclaim a Declaration of Common Aims. Within weeks he would become the first president of a newly independent Czechoslovakia. Choosing Independence Hall was no accident: these emerging nations consciously drew on the American revolutionary example as they broke free from the collapsing empires of Europe.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2006

Tommy Loughran rose to fame in the 1920s, boxing's 'Golden Age,' when the sport commanded the same national spotlight as baseball. The 'Philly Phantom' held the World Light Heavyweight title from 1927 to 1929 and won with brains rather than brawn, using footwork and precision to outmaneuver bigger, harder-hitting men. A gentleman inside the ring and out, he stayed devoted to the Philadelphia neighborhood and church that raised him.

Derry Township, PA · est. 1947

At this bend of the Juniata River, four generations of American movement stacked up in a single view: the old stone turnpike later paved over in concrete, the crumbling towpath and locks of a canal, the memory of river craft that once poled goods upstream, and the Pennsylvania Railroad cutting along the far bank. Each replaced the last as the nation's appetite for faster, cheaper transport reshaped the Appalachian valleys in the 1800s. The Juniata corridor was one of the great gateways west, and every mode of travel left its trace here.

Tinicum Township, PA · est. 1989

On two wooded islands in the Delaware River, the Philadelphia Council established one of the country's oldest Boy Scout camps in 1913, in the first years of American Scouting. Two summers later, camp director E. Urner Goodman and his assistant Carroll A. Edson created the Order of the Arrow here—a camping honor society whose rituals drew on Native American traditions. Its founding Unami Lodge No. 1 gave rise to a program that would spread to Scout councils nationwide.

Chester, PA

This monument marks the corner where Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware meet — a point fixed by generations of surveyors working out boundaries first drawn in the colonial era. The stone carries a U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey reference mark, along with an older 1849 boundary reference and a 1935 corner mark, tying it into the national survey network. Tripoints like this one turned centuries of boundary disputes into precisely measured lines on the ground.

West Bradford Township, PA · est. 1915

Here at Trimble's Ford, the British army under Howe and Cornwallis waded across the west branch of the Brandywine on the morning of September 11, 1777. The crossing was part of the wide, secret flank march that would bring them down on Washington's exposed right by afternoon. A quiet country ford became, for one day, the hinge of a major Revolutionary battle.

Allentown, PA · est. 1967

James Allen, son of Allentown's founder William Allen, built this handsome country seat in 1769–70 on the eve of the Revolution. Over the next century Trout Hall passed through many hands and purposes—known for a time as the Livingston Mansion before becoming Allentown Seminary in 1848 and, in 1867, part of the newly founded Muhlenberg College. Today it houses the Lehigh County Historical Society.

Whitehall, PA · est. 1970

Built in 1756 by John Peter Troxell and acquired in 1768 by Peter Steckel, this sturdy stone farmhouse reflects the German-speaking settlers who shaped colonial Lehigh County. Their solid Pennsylvania-German architecture was made to last generations, and this one did. Restored in 1943, it now serves as a museum kept by the Lehigh County Historical Society.

Whitehall, PA · est. 1970

Just west of this marker stands the stone house John Peter Troxell built in 1756 and Peter Steckel acquired in 1768, a survivor of colonial Lehigh County's German farming community. Its enduring masonry speaks to the craftsmanship of the region's Pennsylvania-German settlers. Restored in 1943, the home is now maintained as a museum by the Lehigh County Historical Society.

Slatington, PA · est. 1952

A sawmill standing here before 1755 turned the forests of the Lehigh Valley into lumber for a growing frontier. When the French and Indian War set the backcountry ablaze, the sturdy mill — also called Kern's Fort — became a defensive station and shelter for troops. Sitting at the crossing of two pioneer roads, it commanded a position of real military value in a dangerous borderland.

Jackson Township, PA · est. 1954

German-speaking settlers of the Tulpehocken Valley organized this congregation in 1727, part of the wave of Palatine immigrants who put down roots in colonial Pennsylvania. When merchant Caspar Wistar granted land for their second house of worship, he asked in return a single red rose paid each year — a quaint "quit-rent" the church has honored ever since, answered since 1902 by a white rose given back to Wistar's descendants.

Pine Grove Township, PA · est. 1949

The Tulpehocken Path was a key overland route through the Blue Mountain, threading the "Gaps of the Swatara" toward the Iroquois council fire at Onondaga in New York. In 1743 the celebrated interpreter Conrad Weiser passed here alongside naturalist John Bartram and mapmaker Lewis Evans, carrying peace messages from Virginia to the Six Nations to defuse frontier tensions. Their journey was part of the delicate diplomacy that kept an uneasy peace between colonists and the powerful Iroquois Confederacy.

Jackson Township, PA · est. 1950

This ridge carried the Tulpehocken Path, a leg of the "Indian Ambassadors Road" used by Iroquois chiefs traveling from Onondaga, their council fire near present-day Syracuse, to Philadelphia. Carrying wampum belts of peace from the "Fire that Never Dies," they journeyed to treat with colonial officials in the tense diplomacy of the 1700s. Shickellamy, the Oneida overseer of the Susquehanna, often walked this route.

Jordan Township, PA · est. 1950

Near Mahantango Gap stood the Double Eagle, a resting place along the Native trail that ran from Shamokin, at the forks of the Susquehanna where Sunbury now stands, eastward to Conrad Weiser's home in the Tulpehocken Valley and on to Philadelphia. This path was a corridor of trade and diplomacy in colonial Pennsylvania. Along it moved the messengers and negotiators who bound the Iroquois and the colony together.

Hegins Township, PA · est. 1950

Running the ridge between Deep and Pine Creeks, the Tulpehocken Path tied Shamokin—the Susquehanna town of the Oneida overseer Shickellamy, now Sunbury—to the fertile Tulpehocken Valley to the southeast. In the mid-1700s it was a diplomatic artery, walked by Iroquois ambassadors carrying wampum and by Moravian and other Christian missionaries seeking Native converts. Along such paths the uneasy business of colonial-era alliance and negotiation moved on foot.

Heidelberg Township, PA · est. 1951

Long before highways, a network of Indian paths threaded through the Pennsylvania mountains, and the Tulpehocken Path was among the most important. It ran from Shamokin on the Susquehanna, over the ridges by way of Pine Grove, down to the Tulpehocken Valley where the interpreter Conrad Weiser made his home. Along it, chiefs of the Six Nations carried belts of wampum — the diplomatic currency of the Iroquois — on missions to "Brother Onas," the Native name for the Penn family, at Philadelphia.

Bethel Township, PA · est. 1952

This ridge once carried the Tulpehocken Path, a Native trail linking the Iroquois town of Shamokin—at present-day Sunbury—with the fertile Tulpehocken Valley to the southeast. Along it traveled Indian ambassadors journeying to treat with "Brother Onas," the Iroquois name for William Penn and the proprietors who followed him. The path was a channel of the careful diplomacy that governed Pennsylvania's early relations with the Six Nations.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2005

Near this spot stood Tun Tavern, a colonial Philadelphia public house that operated from 1693 until 1781 and, by tradition, served as the recruiting ground for the first battalions of Continental Marines. When the Continental Congress authorized two battalions of Marines on November 10, 1775, the fledgling corps drew its first volunteers here—a birthplace the Marine Corps still honors with its motto, Semper Fidelis.

Nicholson Township, PA · est. 1995

When it opened in 1915 on the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad, the Tunkhannock Viaduct was the largest reinforced-concrete structure ever built. Stretching 2,375 feet and rising 240 feet above Tunkhannock Creek, it was the centerpiece of a nearly forty-mile line relocation meant to straighten and speed the railroad. The novelist Theodore Dreiser marveled at it as "one of the true wonders of the world."

Beale Township, PA · est. 1968

Housed in a building first raised in 1816 that had served as a church, Tuscarora Academy opened in 1836 as one of rural Pennsylvania's classical academies, educating students for nearly eighty years. Private and semi-private academies like this filled the gap before public high schools became widespread, teaching Latin, mathematics, and the liberal arts. It closed its doors in 1912 as the modern public system took over.

Unity Township, PA · est. 1946

In 1758, as British and colonial forces cut Forbes Road through the wilderness toward the French stronghold at the Forks of the Ohio, a young George Washington helped set up an encampment near this spot. The rough military road was a decisive artery of the French and Indian War, opening the western country to armies and, later, settlers. A generation on, in 1774, Fort Shippen rose on the same ground as the frontier remained contested.

Pittston, PA · est. 1992

On June 28, 1896, a massive cave-in of rock and coal in the Newton Coal Company's Twin Shaft Colliery killed fifty-eight men in an instant. A commission appointed by the governor investigated and issued safety recommendations that September—advice that would too often be ignored. The tragedy hardened the resolve of anthracite miners and helped fuel the region's turn toward stronger unions under John Mitchell after 1900.

Harrisburg, PA · est. 2006

When the great "Grand Review of the Armies" paraded through Washington in May 1865, the United States Colored Troops who had fought and bled for the Union were pointedly left out. In answer, Black regiments from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts assembled here at State and Filbert Streets on November 14, 1865, for their own triumphant review. Grand Marshal T. Morris Chester led them through Harrisburg to Senator Simon Cameron's home, where leaders including Octavius Catto and William Howard Day honored their service.

Young Township, PA

In November 2010, two of Punxsutawney's oldest civic institutions — the Groundhog Club's Inner Circle and the local Elks lodge — dedicated a flag and memorial honoring everyone who has worn the nation's uniform. Set in the farm country of Jefferson County, it joins the countless community-raised tributes that dot small-town Pennsylvania. Rather than marking a single battle, it gathers the service of veterans across all of America's wars into one quiet spot.

Erie, PA · est. 2023

On December 5, 1843, the U.S. Navy launched its first iron-hulled vessel near this Erie shoreline—an experiment in a new material at a moment when wooden ships still ruled the seas. Her iron components were forged in Pittsburgh and hauled overland to the lakeshore, then assembled into a 163-foot steam-powered paddle frigate. Renamed Wolverine in 1905, she patrolled and trained sailors on the Great Lakes into the twentieth century, earning the nickname "Guardian of the Great Lakes."

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1983

The frigate U.S.S. United States was the first vessel completed for the newly created United States Navy, launched near this spot on the Philadelphia waterfront in 1797 from the design of shipbuilder Joshua Humphreys. She first sailed as the flagship of Captain John Barry, a founding hero of the Navy. In the War of 1812, under Stephen Decatur, she won lasting fame by capturing the British frigate H.M.S. Macedonian before finally being scrapped at Norfolk in 1866.

Lewisburg, PA · est. 1954

This old stable served as a station on the Underground Railroad, the secret network of safe houses that helped enslaved people escape north toward freedom in the decades before the Civil War. Here freedom seekers were hidden, fed, and helped on their way to the next station in a chain that stretched, hand to hand, toward Canada. Aiding fugitives was dangerous and illegal work, carried out quietly by people who risked prosecution to defy slavery.

Harrisburg, PA · est. 2000

In the 1850s a Harrisburg neighborhood known as Tanner's Alley served as a vital link on the Underground Railroad. Freedom seekers found shelter a block apart in the homes of Joseph Bustill and William Jones, while the nearby Wesley Union AME Zion Church hosted the era's fiercest voices against slavery—Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison both spoke there. It was a hub of Black community and antislavery organizing on the road north.

Chambersburg, PA · est. 2003

In the years before the Civil War, the mountainous country around Chambersburg sheltered a network of Underground Railroad stations where people fleeing slavery could pause on their journey north. One local agent was Henry Watson, a free Black barber who helped guide fugitives past the slave-catchers and bounty hunters hunting them. His work turned an ordinary trade into a lifeline to freedom.

West Hanover Township, PA · est. 1948

The Union Canal fulfilled a dream that reached back to William Penn, who as early as the colonial era imagined linking the Susquehanna and Schuylkill rivers. Surveyed in 1762 but not finished until 1828, the completed waterway ran from Middletown on the Susquehanna to Reading on the Schuylkill, threading boats and cargo across the Pennsylvania interior. Railroads soon outpaced it, and the canal was abandoned in 1885; its remains can still be traced near Union Deposit.

Derry Township, PA · est. 1948

First imagined by William Penn and surveyed as early as 1762, the Union Canal finally opened to traffic in 1828, connecting the Susquehanna River at Middletown with the Schuylkill at Reading. For a few decades its boats carried coal and goods across the Pennsylvania interior before the railroads rendered it obsolete. Abandoned in 1885, its overgrown remains can still be seen near Union Deposit, just to the north of the marker.

West Hanover Township, PA · est. 1948

The Union Canal grew from a vision as old as William Penn: a water link between the Susquehanna and Schuylkill rivers. Surveyed in 1762 and completed in 1828, it stretched from Middletown to Reading, carrying cargo through the heart of Pennsylvania until railroads made it unprofitable. It was abandoned in 1885, and traces of the old canal survive near Union Deposit a few miles south.

Bern Township, PA · est. 1950

Operating from 1828 to 1884, the Union Canal linked the Schuylkill River at Reading with the Susquehanna at Middletown, stitching together eastern Pennsylvania's waterways in the great canal-building era. Boats hauled coal, grain, and goods along its towpath, a stretch of which can still be traced southeast of here beside the Tulpehocken Creek.

Penn Township, PA · est. 1950

Here the Union Canal ran along the north bank of the Tulpehocken, where a dam, two locks, and a mule bridge allowed boats to cross Northkill Creek. The surrounding cluster of grist mills, a lime kiln, and a tannery shows how a canal was never just a ditch of water but the spine of a small industrial community that grew up along its banks.

Cumru Township, PA · est. 1950

For most of the 19th century, before railroads dominated, Pennsylvania moved its goods by water. The Union Canal, opened in 1828, stitched together two of the state's great river systems — linking the Schuylkill at Reading to the Susquehanna at Middletown — so boats could carry freight all the way toward Philadelphia. Near this spot, at the tip of Fritts Island, the ruins of the canal's easternmost lock still hint at the engineering that once lifted vessels across the watershed.

Middletown, PA · est. 1950

From 1828 to 1884, the Union Canal linked the Susquehanna River at Middletown to the Schuylkill at Reading, threading its way along the Swatara and Tulpehocken Creeks. Barges laden with coal and iron ore moved through its locks, feeding the furnaces and markets of a booming industrial economy. Here the old canal ran just west of the former mill race, a reminder of how water once powered both mills and commerce.

Jackson Township, PA · est. 1950

The Union Canal, in use from 1828 to 1884, linked the Susquehanna and Schuylkill watersheds across the rolling country of eastern Pennsylvania. Boats descended through a chain of locks from the canal's summit level near Lebanon down to the river at Reading. Remnants of one such lock still lie a short distance south along the Tulpehocken.

Swatara Township, PA · est. 1950

This stretch of the Union Canal reveals the engineering ingenuity that kept 19th-century canals flowing. Water gathered behind the Big Dam in Swatara Gap traveled by a branch canal to the Water Works, where wheels and steam pumps lifted it to the summit level near Lebanon. From that high point the canal fell away in both directions, east to Reading and west to Middletown.

Union Township, PA · est. 1950

A feeder branch of the Union Canal followed the Swatara Creek from Pine Grove down to the main line at the Water Works, carrying both boats and the water that fed the larger system. It operated from 1832 to 1862, its route now marked by the surviving remains of the Big Dam, a guard lock, and several lift locks across the creek. These fragments trace a working piece of Pennsylvania's canal network.

North Lebanon Township, PA · est. 1947

Beneath this ridge runs what the marker calls the first canal tunnel in America, bored in 1823 as part of the ambitious Union Canal. When the full canal opened in 1827, it linked the Schuylkill and Susquehanna watersheds, carrying boats of coal and freight across the Pennsylvania interior in the golden age before railroads. The waterway ran until 1884, and its stone-lined tunnel survives as a monument to early American engineering.

Bellefonte, PA · est. 1992

Chartered in 1856 on ground already used for burials since 1808, this Bellefonte cemetery became the resting place of an unusual concentration of political power. Three Pennsylvania governors and their wives lie here, spanning the Civil War through the Gilded Age. Chief among them is Andrew Gregg Curtin, the wartime governor who mobilized the commonwealth for the Union.

Philipsburg, PA

In 1820, the pioneers who were carving Philipsburg out of the central Pennsylvania wilderness raised a log building that had to do double duty — a schoolhouse on weekdays and a house of worship open to every faith on Sundays. That kind of shared, all-denominations space was typical of frontier settlements too small and too new to support separate congregations. A remodeling in 1842 gave the structure the trim, simplified Gothic lines that made it a local landmark.

Mechanicsburg, PA · est. 1954

Built in 1825 on land donated by Martin Rupp, Union Church is remembered as the oldest public building in Mechanicsburg. True to its name and charter, it was shared among many different religious congregations, each welcome to worship there for a small fee in a community shaped by Pennsylvania's German settlers.

Lewisburg, PA · est. 1982

Established in 1813 from Northumberland County, Union County took its name as a tribute to the Federal Union at a time when the young nation's cohesion was still being tested. Its seat shifted from Mifflinburg to New Berlin and finally, in 1855, to Lewisburg. That town became home to Bucknell University, founded in the 1840s.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2011

In 1736, decades before American independence, a group of Philadelphians led by Benjamin Franklin organized the Union Fire Company — the first genuinely volunteer firefighting brigade in the colonies. Members stored their leather buckets, ladders, and tools here in Grindstone Alley and pledged mutual aid against the constant danger of fire in a crowded colonial city. Their example spread nationwide and helped give rise to the very idea of fire insurance.

Union Township, PA · est. 1947

About 1782 Curtis Grubb, owner of the great Cornwall Iron Furnace, established Union Forge here to refine the pig iron his furnace produced. Charcoal-fired forges like this one hammered brittle pig iron into tough, workable wrought iron, and Union Forge grew into a small industrial village of a thousand acres with shops, a grist mill, and workers' houses. It ran under successive owners until 1868, when newer rolling mills finally rendered such hand-forging obsolete.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2004

Founded in 1862 amid the Civil War, the Union League of Philadelphia began as a patriotic society rallying support behind President Lincoln and the cause of preserving the Union. Its members recruited and financed regiments for the war effort, including some of the first Black troops raised in the North. In the decades after the war its prominent membership turned to political reform and a wide range of civic and philanthropic work.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1993

Chartered in 1935 after African-American musicians were shut out of Philadelphia's white musicians' union, Local 274 became a home and advocate for Black performers. Its rolls included giants of modern jazz such as John Coltrane and Dizzy Gillespie, whose innovations reshaped American music. When it dissolved in 1971, it was the last predominantly Black local of the American Federation of Musicians in the country.

Pittsburgh, PA · est. 2012

Organized in 1908, Local 471 of the American Federation of Musicians was one of Pennsylvania's first African American musicians' unions, giving Black performers a foothold in an industry that often shut them out. As Pittsburgh became a powerhouse of the mid-century jazz world, the local counted greats like Mary Lou Williams, Art Blakey, Ray Brown, and George Benson among its members. A contentious merger with the white local in the 1960s ended one of the oldest Black union organizations in the country.

Uniontown, PA · est. 1946

Uniontown traces its founding to Henry Beeson, who raised a blockhouse here in 1774 on the very ground where the county jail would later stand. For decades it was a modest frontier settlement, but its fortunes turned when the National Road pushed through after 1811. As the great highway threaded the mountains, Uniontown became a busy waystation on the route west.

South Union Township, PA · est. 1946

Uniontown traces its founding to Henry Beeson, who raised a blockhouse here in 1774 on the very ground where the county jail would later stand. For decades it was a modest frontier settlement, but its fortunes turned when the National Road pushed through after 1811. As the great highway threaded the mountains, Uniontown became a busy waystation on the route west.