French & Indian War

Jenner Township, PA · est. 1930

Part of the 1758 Forbes Road built during the French and Indian War, this point at the foot of Laurel Hill marks the Tomahawk Encampment on the army's push toward Fort Duquesne. Each such camp was a measured stage in General John Forbes's methodical advance, guarded and provisioned as the troops climbed the Alleghenies. The marker fixes the spot along the road running toward Fort Ligonier.

Murrysville, PA · est. 1930

Near the end of the 1758 Forbes Road, the Turtle Creek Defile marked the approach to the forks of the Ohio and Fort Duquesne during the French and Indian War. The marker locates the nearby Washington Camp and the Bouquet Encampment along the army's final miles. This rugged passage was among the last obstacles before the British reached their objective.

Quemahoning Township, PA · est. 1930

On the 1758 Forbes Road, the Stony Creek Encampment served as a fortified supply headquarters — its "Ovens" baking bread for the army — during the French and Indian War campaign against Fort Duquesne. Fortifications rose just north of this site as General John Forbes staged men and provisions for the mountainous advance. The marker records its distance along the road from Fort Bedford.

Franklin Township, PA · est. 1947

In 1756, as the French and Indian War set the Pennsylvania frontier ablaze with raids, the province built a chain of stockaded forts to shield its scattered settlers. Fort Allen was one link in that defensive line, raised on the site of present-day Weissport along the Lehigh. Benjamin Franklin himself oversaw the construction of forts in this region during that anxious winter, when the backcountry felt anything but safe.

Weissport, PA · est. 1971

In 1756, as the frontier violence of the French and Indian War pushed Pennsylvania settlers into panic, the colonial government threw up a chain of defensive forts along the Blue Mountains. Fort Allen at present-day Weissport was among them, and its construction was overseen personally by Benjamin Franklin, then a colonial official who marched into the backcountry to organize the province's defenses. The fort itself is long gone; only its stone well survives, restored and tucked behind the houses across the road.

Sunbury, PA · est. 1948

As war with France spread along the frontier, Colonels James Burd and John Clapham raised Fort Augusta in 1756-57 at the forks of the Susquehanna. It became the region's key stronghold, guarding the vital river junction and anchoring Pennsylvania's defenses against raids during the French and Indian War. A mansion later rose on the site in 1852, long after the fort's soldiering days had passed.

Bedford, PA · est. 1972

First known as Raystown, Fort Bedford was thrown up in the summer of 1758 by troops under Colonel Henry Bouquet during the French and Indian War. It became the staging point from which General John Forbes launched his methodical campaign westward, cutting a road through the wilderness to seize the French stronghold of Fort Duquesne—the site that would become Pittsburgh. A museum now stands on the fort's original ground.

Walker Township, PA · est. 1947

Built around 1754 in the Tuscarora Valley, Fort Bigham was a stockaded blockhouse raised to shelter the traders and settlers pushing into Pennsylvania's frontier. In 1756, during the French and Indian War, it was destroyed in a raid by Native warriors—one of many such attacks that terrorized the backcountry and drove families to abandon their farms. Its brief existence captures the vulnerability of frontier life during that conflict.

City of Rome, NY

On March 27, 1756, during the French and Indian War, a French-led force with Native allies stormed Fort Bull, a small British supply post guarding the Oneida Carrying Place — the vital portage linking the Mohawk River to Wood Creek on the water route toward Lake Ontario. The garrison was overwhelmed, its stores of powder and provisions destroyed, and many of the defenders killed.

Chambersburg, PA · est. 1947

In 1756, as the French and Indian War set the frontier ablaze, pioneer landowner Col. Benjamin Chambers fortified his house and mill with a stockade and cannon for defense against Native raids. Chambers had settled at this junction of waters years earlier and founded the town that still bears his name. His fortified homestead anchored one of the exposed western settlements during the war's dangerous years.

Montgomery Township, PA · est. 1946

Around 1755, as the French and Indian War set the frontier ablaze, Philip Davis's land became the site of a fortified refuge where nearby families could take shelter from raids. It stood as the southernmost link in a chain of such strongholds stretching across the Pennsylvania backcountry. In an age before organized armies patrolled the interior, these settlers' forts were the difference between survival and abandonment.

Montgomery Township, PA · est. 1931

Around 1754, as tensions with France and Native nations flared into the French and Indian War, the Welsh settler Philip Davis built a private fort on his plantation here to shelter frontier families from raids. Davis was a local patriot and tax collector active in the Presbytery of New Castle. His fortified home was one of many improvised strongholds that dotted the exposed Pennsylvania backcountry.

Whitehall, PA · est. 2001

On the north bank of Coplay Creek, Swiss immigrant Adam Deshler raised a sturdy stone house in 1760 that doubled as a fortified refuge during the dangerous years of the French and Indian War. Frontier families sheltered behind its walls when raids threatened the scattered settlements of the Lehigh Valley. The building outlived its garrison days by nearly two centuries, passing through the Deshler family and later the Coplay Cement Company before finally coming down around 1940.

Iredell County, NC

Built by the colony in 1756, Fort Dobbs guarded North Carolina's western frontier during the French and Indian War. Garrisoned by provincial troops until 1762, it offered settlers refuge from raids and anchored the colony's defenses in a contested backcountry. Its site lies a mile north of this marker.

Lynn Township, PA · est. 1951

Around 1756, at the height of the French and Indian War, a log blockhouse rose just north of here as one link in a chain of frontier defenses guarding the settled valleys south of Blue Mountain. Its garrison watched the country between the Schuylkill and Lehigh Rivers, offering refuge to farm families when raiding parties struck the exposed Pennsylvania backcountry. Such small forts were the difference between staying and fleeing for the region's colonists.

West Penn Township, PA · est. 1955

In the mid-1750s the Pennsylvania frontier erupted into violence as the French and Indian War spread down the Blue Mountain, and colonists petitioned for a chain of provincial forts to shield their scattered farms. This small stockade, thrown up in 1756 and named for Benjamin Franklin—then charged with organizing the colony's frontier defenses—was one such outpost. It saw little action and was given up the following year, a reminder of how quickly and cheaply many of these hastily built strongholds rose and fell.

Lewistown, PA · est. 1947

Fort Granville was raised in 1755–56 as one link in the chain of stockades meant to shield Pennsylvania's frontier settlers during the French and Indian War. On July 30, 1756, a French and Indian force under Captain Louis Coulon de Villiers overwhelmed and burned it, carrying off captives. Its fall exposed how fragile the colony's western defenses were in the war's early, disastrous years.

Lewistown, PA · est. 1916

Raised in 1755–56 on the high bank of the Juniata, Fort Granville guarded a vulnerable stretch of the Pennsylvania frontier during the French and Indian War. It was attacked twice, and in July 1756 a large French and Indian force overwhelmed it, killing its commander, Lieut. Edward Armstrong, and either killing or carrying off the entire garrison. The loss was a shock that helped provoke Col. John Armstrong's retaliatory raid on the Delaware town of Kittanning weeks later.

Halifax Township, PA · est. 1946

In 1756, at the height of the French and Indian War, Col. William Clapham built Fort Halifax on the Susquehanna as one link in a chain of provincial forts strung along the Pennsylvania frontier. These stockades sheltered settlers and supplied troops during a war that saw brutal raids sweep the backcountry. The fort itself was short-lived, but it anchored the colony's defensive line during the conflict's most dangerous years.

Halifax Township, PA · est. 1926

When the French and Indian War set Pennsylvania's frontier aflame in the mid-1750s, the province threw up a chain of forts to shield its scattered settlements. Fort Halifax was one such post, built in 1756 under Colonel William Clapham along the Susquehanna corridor. Little more than a stockaded strongpoint, it anchored the line of defense that kept the war from rolling deeper into the colony.

Stroudsburg, PA · est. 1967

Built on Benjamin Franklin's direction and named for provincial councilman James Hamilton, Fort Hamilton guarded the Pocono frontier from 1755 to 1757 as part of a defensive chain raised during the French and Indian War. When violence threatened the scattered settlers of the region, forts like this one offered the only refuge. It was abandoned in 1757 and later succeeded by Fort Penn.

Stroudsburg, PA · est. 1930

Fort Hamilton was one of a chain of frontier forts that Benjamin Franklin directed to be built across Pennsylvania during the French and Indian War. Raised in January 1756 by Captain Levi Trump, it was garrisoned by a company of some forty men and passed through a succession of commanders over the next several years. The post guarded settlers in the Pocono frontier against raids during the conflict.

Susquehanna Township, PA · est. 1947

As the French and Indian War set the Pennsylvania frontier ablaze, colonists built a stockaded blockhouse here in 1755–56 to shelter settlers and to stage the construction of Fort Augusta upriver on the Susquehanna. For a few tense years it was a link in the province's chain of defenses; once the danger passed after 1763, it was abandoned and crumbled into ruin. The ground today holds the Fort Hunter Museum.

Susquehanna Township, PA · est. 1916

Built in the anxious winter of 1755–56, Fort Hunter was a blockhouse ringed by a stockade, one link in the chain of defenses Pennsylvania threw up along the Susquehanna after frontier raids began. It served less as a battlefield than as a supply depot and gathering point for troops moving through the valley during the French and Indian War. By 1814 the danger was a memory, and its last traces vanished when a new building rose on the ground.

Middle Smithfield Township, PA · est. 1947

In 1756, with the French and Indian War exposing Pennsylvania's undefended backcountry to devastating raids, the colonial government ordered a chain of frontier forts built along the mountains. Fort Hyndshaw anchored the northern end of that line, a stockaded refuge and garrison post guarding the settlers of the upper Delaware. These modest works were less battlefields than shelters where frontier families could ride out the terror of wartime raiding.

Waterford, PA · est. 1922

Here the French built Fort Le Boeuf in 1752 as one link in a chain of posts meant to seal their claim to the Ohio country. In 1753 a 21-year-old Major George Washington arrived carrying a letter from Virginia's governor demanding the French withdraw from lands Britain also claimed. The French politely refused, and the collision of empires that followed erupted into the French and Indian War.

West Brunswick Township, PA · est. 1949

After General Edward Braddock's disastrous 1755 defeat near Fort Duquesne left the Pennsylvania frontier exposed, colonists hurriedly threw up a chain of stockaded forts to shield settlers from raids during the French and Indian War. Fort Lebanon was one such outpost, later renamed Fort William in 1758 as the frontier defenses were reorganized. Its site, marked just off the road below, recalls a time when this quiet countryside was a tense military frontier.

Waterford, PA · est. 1946

This ground guarded the portage route linking Lake Erie to the Ohio Valley, and three successive forts rose here as empires contested the region. The French built the first in 1753 to secure their road south, abandoning it as their fortunes collapsed in 1759. A British fort followed in 1760 but was burned during Pontiac's uprising in 1763, and finally an American fort went up in 1794 to shield settlers moving west.

Waterford, PA · est. 1951

Here once stood the French Fort LeBoeuf, part of the chain of outposts France built to hold the Ohio Country in the 1750s. It was to this fort in 1753 that a 21-year-old George Washington carried a message from Virginia's governor demanding the French withdraw—his first public mission, and one of the sparks that helped ignite the French and Indian War. The Judson House, built in 1820, now occupies the historic ground.

Ligonier, PA · est. 1946

Fort Ligonier rose here in 1758 as a forward base for the Forbes Expedition, the British campaign that drove the French from the forks of the Ohio during the French and Indian War. Under Colonel James Burd its garrison beat back a French and Indian attack that October, and in 1763 it stood as the only small western fort never taken during Pontiac's War. From its shelter, Colonel Bouquet launched the relief that saved Fort Pitt.

Dublin Township, PA · est. 1924

In 1756, as war between Britain and France spilled across the Pennsylvania frontier, the colony raised a chain of provincial forts to shield its exposed backcountry settlements. Fort Littleton was one of these strongpoints, ordered up under Governor Robert Hunter Morris and planted on this knoll to guard a vital road through the mountains. In the fear-filled years of the French and Indian War, such stockades were refuge and rallying point for settlers who lived within reach of raiding parties.

Peters Township, PA · est. 1947

Built by the provincial government in 1756, Fort Loudon guarded the frontier during the French and Indian War and in 1758 served as a staging point for Gen. John Forbes's expedition that captured Fort Duquesne. In 1765 the fort became a flashpoint of a different kind when frontiersmen led by James Smith — the "Black Boys" — forced a British garrison to withdraw, an early act of armed colonial defiance. The site thus spans both the imperial war and the friction that would build toward revolution.

Peters Township, PA · est. 1915

Fort Loudon was built by Colonel John Armstrong in the winter of 1756 to guard the Pennsylvania frontier during the French and Indian War, replacing the earlier post at McDowell's Mill. It became a key staging point for the campaigns of General John Forbes in 1758 and Colonel Henry Bouquet in 1763–64, and the base from which pack-horse trains set out for the west. In 1765 it was the scene of the defiant exploits of Captain James Smith and his 'Black Boys,' frontiersmen who resisted the arms trade with hostile tribes.

Dublin Township, PA · est. 1967

Begun in 1755 by frontier trader and Indian agent George Croghan, Fort Lyttelton was one of a string of provincial strongholds thrown up across Pennsylvania during the French and Indian War. Named by Governor Morris for Sir George Lyttelton, Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, it sheltered provincial soldiers, regulars, and local volunteers through the frontier violence of the 1750s and the 1763 uprising. By 1764 the fort had already fallen into ruins, its wartime purpose spent.

Franklin, PA · est. 1969

During the French and Indian War, the French built Fort Machault here in 1756 to help secure their chain of posts guarding the route to the contested Ohio Country. Its usefulness ended in 1759, when the fall of Fort Niagara forced the French to abandon and burn their positions along the upper Allegheny. The site of the fort lies a block to the south of the marker.

East Hanover Township, PA · est. 1970

During the French and Indian War, settler James Brown's fortified log house served as a frontier strongpoint, garrisoned as Fort Manada from January 1756 to May 1757 as an outpost of nearby Fort Swatara. A small complement of about twenty-one officers and men manned it against raids along Pennsylvania's exposed backcountry. No description of the structure itself survives, leaving only its story on the land.

Montgomery Township, PA · est. 1946

Built about 1755 on William Marshall's land near the Old Warm Spring Trail, this refuge was one link in the frontier's early-warning network. It served as a station on the daily military patrols that guarded the Conococheague Settlement against raids during the French and Indian War. Riders moving between such posts carried word of danger, giving scattered farm families precious time to reach safety.

Hamilton Township, PA · est. 1947

In the tense years of the French and Indian War, Pennsylvania's Cumberland Valley settlers threw up log stockades like Fort McCord to shelter their families when frontier violence flared. Named for the settler John McCord, this refuge was overwhelmed and burned on April 1, 1756, in a raid that left 27 people dead or dragged into captivity. Such attacks were part of the wider war between Britain and France, in which allied Native nations struck deep into the exposed backcountry.

Hamilton Township, PA · est. 1914

On April 1, 1756, Fort McCord — one of the small stockaded refuges thrown up along Pennsylvania's Cumberland Valley frontier during the French and Indian War — was overrun, and twenty-seven settlers were killed or carried off. A militia party that gave chase was itself ambushed days later at Sideling Hill, where many of the pursuers fell. The marker names the women, children, and provincial soldiers lost, preserving a roll of the dead from one of the war's bloodiest weeks on the backcountry.

Peters Township, PA · est. 1947

When war swept the frontier after 1755, John McDowell's gristmill was ringed with a stockade and pressed into service as a provincial strongpoint until the more substantial Fort Loudon rose the next year. The site also anchored one end of Colonel James Burd's road, cut in 1755 to carry troops and supplies westward toward the Ohio country. A working mill thus became both a fort and a gateway into the contested interior.

Peters Township, PA · est. 1916

Fort McDowell grew up around a frontier gristmill before 1754, then became a supply base and munitions store as the French and Indian War closed in, holding that role until Fort Loudon was raised in 1756. From this point in 1755 Col. James Burd pushed a military road westward to link with Braddock's ill-fated route at Turkey Foot. Standing at the edge of settled country, the little fort saw its share of the war's frontier alarms.

Shippensburg, PA · est. 1961

In the anxious summer of 1755, after General Braddock's crushing defeat on the Monongahela threw the Pennsylvania frontier open to French and allied Native raids, local settlers threw up a stockade here under James Burd and named it for provincial governor Robert Hunter Morris. Garrisoned by provincial troops under Hugh Mercer, it was one link in a chain of frontier forts meant to shield the exposed Cumberland Valley. Long after the timbers rotted, the soldiers' well still marked the spot a block north on Burd Street.

Wharton Township, PA · est. 1946

In the spring of 1754 a young Virginia colonel named George Washington threw up a crude circular stockade in this soggy mountain clearing, aptly naming it Fort Necessity. On July 4 that year, outnumbered and surrounded by French and allied forces in the pouring rain, he was compelled to surrender — the only time in his life he ever did so. The skirmish here helped ignite the French and Indian War, a global conflict that reshaped North America.

Wharton Township, PA · est. 1926

In the Great Meadows just south of here, a 22-year-old lieutenant colonel named George Washington built a rough stockade he called Fort Necessity in the summer of 1754. Surrounded by a far larger force of French regulars and their Native allies under Coulon de Villiers, Washington and his raw Virginia and South Carolina troops fought a nine-hour engagement in the rain before surrendering, marching out with the honors of war on July 4, 1754.

Polk Township, PA · est. 1947

Fort Norris rose in 1756 as one of a string of frontier defenses Pennsylvania threw up during the French and Indian War, when raids drove settlers from their farms across the northern counties. Garrisoned by provincial troops, it served as a strongpoint and place of refuge in a landscape suddenly turned dangerous. The actual site stood about a mile from where the marker stands.

Indiana Township, PA · est. 1959

This blockhouse, a small defensive redoubt, was built in 1764 by Colonel Henry Bouquet as one of the outworks guarding Fort Pitt near its western bastions. It rose in the tense years after the French and Indian War, when British control of the forks of the Ohio was still contested during Pontiac's War. Today it is the only surviving structure of the great fort that once commanded this strategic point.

Erie, PA · est. 1946

Guarding the Lake Erie end of the strategic portage to the Ohio Valley, Fort Presque Isle changed hands as European empires fought for the continent. The French built it under Marin in 1753 and abandoned it in 1759; a British fort raised by Colonel Bouquet in 1760 fell to Pontiac's warriors in 1763. From here the French Road ran inland to Fort LeBoeuf, a chain of posts binding the lake to the Ohio country.

Northeast Madison Township, PA · est. 1947

In 1755, as the French and Indian War set the Pennsylvania frontier ablaze, settlers in the Sherman's Valley threw up a fortified stronghold on George Robinson's land. Fort Robinson was one of a chain of rough private and provincial forts where scattered farm families could shelter when war parties swept through. For several harrowing years it served as a place of refuge on an exposed and dangerous frontier.

Shirleysburg, PA · est. 1947

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

Shirleysburg, PA · est. 1926

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

Union Township, PA · est. 1999

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

Franklin, PA

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

St. Thomas Township, PA · est. 1930

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

St. Thomas Township, PA · est. 1947

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

Bedford, PA · est. 1952

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

Cochranton, PA · est. 1946

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

LeBoeuf Township, PA · est. 1946

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

Carlisle, PA · est. 1949

General John Armstrong lived on this site and earned lasting fame as the "Hero of Kittanning" for his 1756 raid on a Delaware stronghold during the French and Indian War. He went on to serve as a Revolutionary officer, a member of the Continental Congress, and a county judge, dying in Carlisle in 1795 and resting in the Old Graveyard two blocks south. His long career spanned the frontier wars and the founding of the nation.

Waterford, PA · est. 1946

In December 1753 a 21-year-old George Washington reached this remote frontier carrying a message from Virginia's governor demanding that the French withdraw from lands Britain claimed. The French politely refused, and Washington's dangerous winter journey home carried the warning that war was coming. The mission was his first appearance on the public stage, and a statue here honors that formative errand into the wilderness.

Forward Township, PA · est. 1970

In December 1753, a young George Washington passed through this region on his return from Fort Le Boeuf, where he had carried a British demand that the French withdraw from the Ohio Country. Traveling the Venango Indian Trail, he came close to death here on December 27, 1753, when an Indian fired at him from less than fifteen paces. The perilous mission helped ignite the imperial struggle that became the French and Indian War.