Native American History

Borger, TX

Fifteen miles from this marker lies the site of the first Battle of Adobe Walls, fought on November 25, 1864, when Kiowa and Comanche warriors met U.S. troops led by Colonel Christopher 'Kit' Carson. Carson attacked the villages but, badly outnumbered, was forced to withdraw in what proved to be the famous scout and frontiersman's last fight. The clash was one of the largest engagements between the Army and the Southern Plains nations.

Columbus, TX

Among Stephen F. Austin's "Old Three Hundred" colonists of the 1820s, American holidays like the Fourth of July persisted despite Austin's caution against provoking Mexican authorities. On July 4, 1826, settlers near Beason's Crossing — future Columbus — planned a barbecue marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, drawing colonists from far away. A group traveling from Gonzales to attend was attacked by Indians and returned to find their homes plundered.

Van Horn, TX

This far West Texas rangeland was Apache country into the 1880s — one of the last clashes between Texas Rangers and Apaches unfolded in the mountains just west in 1881. In 1890 James Monroe Daugherty, a Confederate express rider turned cattle baron who had ridden countless trail drives, founded the Figure 2 Ranch here, later helping organize Culberson County before selling the spread in 1933 to Houston millionaire James Marion West, Sr.

Palo Pinto, TX

Soon after the town of Golconda—later Palo Pinto—was founded in 1857, frontier missionary and cattleman George Webb Slaughter gathered a Baptist congregation there. A charter member of the Brazos River Baptist Association, it counted dozens of new members in its first year while enduring drought, hardship, and conflict with Native peoples on the open frontier. Merging with Slaughter Valley Baptist Church, the congregation settled at this site in 1886 and worships on still.

Stinnett, TX

In the closing months of the Civil War, thousands of Comanche and Kiowa warriors — allied with the Confederacy — clashed with a Federal column of some 372 men led by the famed scout Col. Kit Carson near the ruins of an old trading post on the Canadian River. Though Carson mounted what he called the greatest fight of his career, the vastly outnumbered soldiers were forced to withdraw, making this one of the largest Indian engagements of the war. A decade later, some of the same warriors would face buffalo hunters at the 1874 Battle of Adobe Walls, a fight that helped open the Panhandle to settlement.

Mason, TX

On February 5, 1847, in the Texas Hill Country, a band of Penateka Comanches under Chief Ketumusua approached the camp of German immigrant surveyors led by John O. Meusebach, agent for the Adelsverein colonization society. Rather than fight, the two parties shared gifts and a meal and agreed to talk further. That first encounter opened the way to a formal peace council weeks later—a rare voluntary agreement to share territory that both sides largely honored.

Wichita Falls, TX

The first Anglo-American settlers reached Wichita County in 1856, but frontier conflict with Native peoples—for whom the county was named—delayed its formal organization until 1882. That year residents finally seated a full slate of officials, from Judge James S. Akers and Attorney Robert E. Huff down to the inspector of hides and animals. The roster captures the moment a raw frontier district became a functioning county.

Minneapolis, MN

This marker records that the first dwelling in what became Minneapolis was built here in June 1834 by brothers Samuel W. and Gideon H. Pond, Congregationalist missionaries who came to live among the Dakota near Lake Calhoun (Bde Maka Ska). The Pond brothers learned the Dakota language and helped create one of the first written forms of it, producing dictionaries and translations. The Native Sons of Minnesota dedicated this remembrance in 1908, at the height of early civic monument-building.

Morro Bay, CA · est. 1995

For 250 years Spanish galleons crossed the Pacific between Manila and Acapulco, and in 1587 one of them, the Nuestra Señora de Esperanza under Pedro de Unamuno, put a landing party ashore near Morro Bay. That party included "Luzon Indios" — Filipino crew members — marking what is remembered as the first landing of Filipinos in the continental United States. After a deadly clash with local Native people days later, Unamuno abandoned further exploration of the coast.

Brushy Creek, TX

Cynthia Ann Parker was captured as a child during an 1836 raid on Fort Parker and grew up among the Comanche, marrying a chief and raising a family fully within Comanche life. Recaptured by Texas Rangers in 1860, she was torn from the only world she knew and never adjusted, while her son Quanah Parker became the last great Comanche war chief. First buried at this spot, her remains were moved twice more before final rest at Fort Sill.

Hopkinsville, KY

Organized in 1813—by tradition through the pioneer minister and Cherokee missionary Gideon Blackburn—First Presbyterian is among Hopkinsville's oldest congregations. Its sanctuary, built between 1848 and 1852, still stands. During the harsh winter of 1861–62 the building served as a hospital for Confederate troops encamped nearby under Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest, when disease swept the camp.

Easton, PA · est. 1953

Easton's First Reformed congregation gathered in 1745, and by 1776 — the very year of independence — its members had built and enlarged this church. In 1777 it hosted an Indian treaty council, one of the diplomatic gatherings that shaped relations between the young nation and Native peoples on the Pennsylvania frontier. During the Revolution the building also served as a military hospital, its pews and floors given over to the sick and wounded of the Continental cause.

Fort Davis, TX

In 1881 settlers P. H. Pruett, Cal Nations, James Dawson, and Joe Dorsey raised this adobe schoolhouse, said to be the first rural school west of the Pecos River. A nearby Texas Rangers' camp shielded the families from Apache raids, and Mrs. Pruett once rode at midnight to warn the Rangers of approaching Apaches. When Pruett sold his home in 1883 and moved to found the Lone Cottonwood Ranch, the school closed.

Paradise Township, PA · est. 1918

In 1710 William Penn granted a large tract in the rolling farmland of what became Lancaster County to Daniel Fiere and Isaac Lefever, French Huguenots who had fled religious persecution in Europe. Settling here with the widowed Madam Mary Fiere and her family, they were among the first Europeans to put down roots in this corner of Penn's colony. A surveying error later forced them to surrender the original patent for a corrected one, and a child born within sight of this spot is remembered as the settlement's first.

Redbank Township, PA

Near the mouth of Town Run on Redbank Creek stood a Shawnee village in the late 1700s, named "Fishbasket" for the enormous schools of fish that crowded these waters. It sat at the crossing of major Native travel routes, including the Frankstown-Venango and Punxsutawney-Venango Paths. Archaeology has revealed that fortified Indian villages had occupied this rich locale far earlier, deep in the prehistoric past.

Roby, TX

This region was crossed by an old Indian trail running from Mexico to the Texas frontier settlements, and in 1856 Colonel Robert E. Lee — then commanding the U.S. Second Cavalry, years before he led the Confederate army — campaigned against Native peoples here. Fisher County was carved from Young and Bexar territories, created in 1876 and organized in 1886, and named for Samuel Rhoads Fisher, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence and Secretary of the Navy of the Republic. Its seat, Roby, took its name from local landowners.

Grand Ledge, MI

Long before parkland, the sandstone bluffs the Ojibwe knew as "Big Rocks" drew people led by Chief Okemos, who camped here each spring to tap the sugar maples. Later in the 19th century the same scenery attracted the Grand Ledge Spiritualist Camp Association, part of a national spiritualist movement that favored quiet natural retreats. The layers of use — Indigenous seasonal camp, then Victorian summer colony — are written into this single riverside spot.

Decatur, TX

Flat Rock was settled in the 1850s by Moses Ball and other pioneers, its name drawn from flat stones that formed a local landmark. Tradition holds the first burial in its cemetery was an American Indian and the second a small girl who died as her family migrated through; the oldest legible stones date to 1878, amid many unmarked graves. Ex-Texas Ranger George W. Stevens deeded the ground for the cemetery in 1890, and the community faded after 1914.

Comanche, TX

In 1854, when a boy named Martin V. Fleming camped in this grove with his father, he ducked behind this very oak to escape a raiding party riding through the trees. Decades later, as paving crews moved to cut the tree down, the grown "Uncle Mart" faced them off with his gun and saved it. The Fleming Oak still stands as a living witness to Comanche County's frontier days.

Floresville, TX

This land began as ranch country for Mission Espada and Rancho de las Cabras, granted by the Spanish crown and once known as Chayopines for the Native people who lived there. By 1756 Juan José Flores kept an adobe house at a river crossing where travelers camped overnight, and that hacienda — encased within a brick house built around it in 1844 — is thought to be the oldest home in Wilson County. Nearby lie the stone foundations of an early-1800s chapel and its campo santo, and the rancho passed through three generations of the Flores family.

Flower Mound, TX

Rising some fifty feet above the North Texas prairie and crowned each spring with wildflowers, this dome-shaped hill gave its name to the settlers who gathered around it. It stood on land that the Wichita people inhabited before W. S. Peters's colonists arrived in the 1840s under grants from the Republic of Texas. Local lore held that no building or tree ever took root on its summit, and a Presbyterian church first put the name "Flower Mound" on the map in 1854. Long a private farm landmark, the mound now anchors a suburb spreading out from Dallas and Fort Worth.

Fondren, TX

In 1854 William B. Fondren and his wife Susannah settled beside Dry Creek along the military road linking Fort Worth and Fort Belknap, and a family graveyard soon took root nearby. General Edward H. Tarrant, namesake of Tarrant County, died at the Fondren home in 1858 and lay here for a time, while other early stones bear the stark epitaph "Killed by Indians, 1860." The pioneer burial ground served the frontier community until 1937.

Carlisle, PA · est. 1952

In 1758, during the French and Indian War, General John Forbes set out from his base at Carlisle to seize Fort Duquesne at the Forks of the Ohio. Rather than follow Braddock's ill-fated earlier route, Forbes drove a new road westward, keeping as close as army wagons allowed to the old Raystown Indian and Traders Path. Axemen under Colonel Henry Bouquet widened the trail into a military road that ended with the French abandoning and burning the fort.

Southampton Township, PA · est. 1952

At Shippensburg the old Raystown Path split, and in 1758 General John Forbes had to choose his army's line of march west. One branch climbed directly over three steep mountains toward Burnt Cabins; Forbes instead took the southern fork around Parnells Knob to Fort Loudon, crossing the Tuscarora Mountain at Cowan Gap to avoid the punishing grades. The choice shaped where his military road—and later settlement—would run.

Dublin Township, PA · est. 1952

The Raystown Path was one of the great Indian trails threading the Allegheny ridges of central Pennsylvania, and in 1758 it became a corridor of war. During the French and Indian War, General John Forbes cut a military road westward toward the French stronghold at the forks of the Ohio, throwing up a chain of forts to guard his slow, methodical advance. The towns strung along his line of march — Littleton, Bedford, Ligonier, and finally Pittsburgh — still carry the names of those wilderness garrisons.

Tionesta, PA · est. 1982

Established in 1848 from Jefferson County and enlarged with part of Venango County in 1866, Forest County was named for the deep woodlands that still define it. Long before county lines, the region was laced with Native American paths, and between 1767 and 1770 the Moravian missionary David Zeisberger carried his mission among the Munsee people here. The county seat later moved from Marienville to Tionesta.

Forestburg, TX

Forestburg took shape just after the Civil War, founded in memory of the pioneers who had pushed into this contested North Texas frontier. Its brief inscription honors settlers who battled Native peoples, endured hardship, and broke the soil so that a lasting community could follow. It marks the raw edge of settlement where survival itself was the founding achievement.

Sanger, TX

William S. Forester drove his family from Tennessee to the Denton County frontier in the early 1850s and carved out a ranch on open range still contested with Native peoples, a danger that cost his teenage son Sol his life while herding cattle. His son Lock, a Confederate veteran, expanded the spread past 6,000 acres and made its "Two I Jinglebob" brand well known, before a third generation carried the ranch into the twentieth century. For over a century the Forester Ranch shaped the cattle country of North Texas.

Hempfield Township, PA · est. 1929

Fort Allen, also known as Truby's Blockhouse, was built and commanded by Col. Christopher Truby to shelter the scattered settlers of Westmoreland County on the exposed western frontier. It stood through the turmoil of Dunmore's War in 1774, later Indian conflicts, and the Revolution, when frontier families lived under constant threat of raid. From here in 1774, eighty inhabitants led by Wendel Oury petitioned Governor John Penn for aid against a feared uprising.

Jersey Shore, PA · est. 1947

Colonel Henry Antes built this stockade in 1776 at the mouth of Antes Creek on the West Branch of the Susquehanna, near the region's first gristmill. When the frontier collapsed in the panic of 1778 known as the Great Runaway, settlers fled downriver and the abandoned fort was burned by Native raiders—leaving the valley emptied of the families who had briefly tried to hold it.

Manorville, PA

In the summer of 1779, as the American Revolution raged along the western frontier, Continental soldiers threw up this small outpost on the bank of the Allegheny River. It was a staging point for Col. Daniel Brodhead's expedition northward against the Seneca — one arm of the wider campaign that year to break the power of the Iroquois nations allied with the British. The fort's usefulness was brief: raised in June and given up by autumn, once the campaign had passed through. It honored Maj. Gen. John Armstrong, a veteran Pennsylvania frontier officer.

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.

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.

Desdemona, TX

A few miles southwest stood Fort Blair, the largest of the far-western "family forts" that sheltered settlers through the Civil War years when regular troops were away. Started by C.C. Blair in 1857, its dozen log cabins were linked by pickets, and its families made their own candles, soap, food, and clothing from whatever the land offered while defending against Indian raids. After the war the site became the town of Desdemona, which boomed when oil was struck in 1918.

Centerville, TX

Around 1840, pioneer families settling this corner of Leon County lived uneasily beside Kichai and Kickapoo camps. After Christopher C. Staley was killed while hunting in early 1840, the settlers built Fort Boggy—two blockhouses and eleven dwellings—under a company authorized by Texas President Mirabeau B. Lamar and led by Captain Thomas Greer. Some seventy-seven people crowded inside, plagued more by illness than by raids, until the danger eased after Greer himself was killed in an 1841 attack.

Derry Township, PA · est. 1947

In 1777, as the Revolution raged and the Pennsylvania frontier grew dangerous, settlers along the forks of Chillisquaque Creek fortified Bosley's mill, stockading and garrisoning it against raids. Such improvised frontier forts were the everyday reality of the backcountry war, where mills, farms, and blockhouses doubled as refuges. The site reflects a conflict fought not only on famous battlefields but in the woods and clearings of the northern branch of the Susquehanna.

Bronte vicinity, TX

The U.S. Army planted Fort Chadbourne on the West Texas frontier in October 1852 to shield settlers pressing into country still held by Comanche and other Plains peoples. It honored Lieutenant T. L. Chadbourne, killed at the Battle of Resaca de la Palma during the Mexican-American War. From 1858 to 1861 the post doubled as a key station on the Butterfield Overland Mail route, watering stagecoaches carrying passengers and mail toward California.

Bronte, TX

When Texas seceded, a company of the First Regiment of Texas Mounted Rifles occupied Fort Chadbourne — a stop on the old Butterfield stageline — to guard settlers against Indian raids and to watch for Union sympathizers heading west. Permanent troops withdrew in 1862 as the state pulled its frontier defense line more than fifty miles eastward, but Confederate and state scouting parties used the post intermittently until the war's end. Often supplying their own horses, guns, and provisions, these men held a thinly defended edge of the Confederacy.

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.

Boulder County, CO

This marker points to the site of Fort Chambers, a fortified post thrown up on George W. Chambers's farm in 1864 during a season of open conflict between Colorado settlers and the Plains tribes. That year saw the territory on a war footing, with local militia mustering across the Front Range. Small frontier forts like this one were hastily built strongpoints where farm families and volunteers gathered when raids and rumors of raids swept the plains.

Brackettville, TX

Established in 1852 beside the springs of Las Moras Creek, Fort Clark guarded the military road from San Antonio to El Paso and the border with Mexico. Nearly every U.S. cavalry regiment passed through, and its garrison — including the Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts and the Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th Cavalry and 24th and 25th Infantry — played a decisive part in the Indian campaigns of the 1870s. Held briefly by Confederates during the Civil War, the fort remained a horse-cavalry post until 1946.

Brackettville, TX

From its founding in 1852 until it closed in 1946, Fort Clark guarded the California road and the Texas frontier against raids and outlaws, named for a major killed in the Mexican War. Union troops abandoned it after Texas seceded in 1861 and reoccupied it in 1866, later relying on the celebrated Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts and a nearby Indian reservation. Nearly every U.S. Cavalry regiment served here, and in World War II the 2nd and 11th Cavalry trained on its grounds before the post was inactivated in 1946.

Austin, TX

In the first anxious years of the Republic of Texas, the young nation strung frontier posts along its edge to guard settlers from raids. This site marks Fort Colorado — also known as Coleman's Fort — a short-lived station of the late 1830s garrisoned by early ranging companies on the Colorado River near present-day Austin. It stood only about two years before being abandoned as the line of settlement shifted.

Eagle Pass, TX

Established in 1849 on the Rio Grande, Fort Duncan guarded the California emigrant trail and anchored campaigns against the Lipan Apache in the newly won Southwest. Its long life mirrored the era's conflicts: abandoned and regarrisoned amid border raids, briefly held as a Confederate "Rio Grande Station" during the Civil War, and later home to the Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts organized here in 1870. Reoccupied during the Mexican border troubles of 1916 and used as a World War I training camp, it finally became a city park in 1938.

Mobeetie, TX

When Fort Elliott was established in 1875 to secure the Texas Panhandle, teamster-merchant J. J. Long was hired to supply its flagpole. He cut two great cedar trees in the breaks near Antelope Hills, thirty miles away, hauled them by wagon, and fashioned this fifty-foot pole. After the fort closed in 1890 Long bought the pole for his store, and it later stood at the Mobeetie school for two decades before being raised again here in 1949.

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.

Delaware Township, PA · est. 1947

As the Revolution reached the Pennsylvania frontier, settlers fortified Jacob Freeland's house in 1778, ringing it with a stockade against raids. On July 29, 1779, a force of British and allied Indians overwhelmed the small post, and its garrison of 21 were killed or captured—one of the sharp, deadly clashes that made the upper Susquehanna a war zone.

South Union Township, PA · est. 1946

Around 1764, on the old Catawba trail through the Pennsylvania backcountry, Thomas Gaddis raised a fortified house where settlers could take refuge during frontier raids. Such private strongholds were lifelines in a region where colonial and Native conflicts made isolated homesteads perilous. Gaddis himself later served as a colonel in the Pennsylvania Continental Line during the Revolution.

Gatesville, TX

After the Mexican-American War, the U.S. Army strung a line of frontier outposts across Texas, and in 1849 it built Fort Gates, the last of that cordon, to shield settlers from raids along the advancing frontier. Named for Mexican-American War veteran Maj. Collinson Reed Gates, the seventeen-building post drew settling families to its protection and became the nucleus of the surrounding community. The garrison moved on in 1852, and in 1854 the settlement it had seeded gave rise to Coryell County, with Gatesville soon becoming the county seat.

Whitney, TX

Fort Graham rose in March 1849 on the site of a Waco Indian village, one of a chain of frontier military posts the U.S. Army planted across Texas as Anglo settlement pushed westward. Established by Brevet Major R. A. Arnold of the Second Dragoons, it honored Lt. Col. William M. Graham, killed at Molino del Rey during the recent war with Mexico. The post was abandoned in 1853 as the frontier line moved farther west, and its barracks were later reconstructed in part from the original stone as a community gathering place.

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.

Elko County, NV

Established in July 1867 by Captain Samuel Smith, Fort Halleck stood guard over the California Emigrant Trail, the Overland mail route, and the advancing Central Pacific Railroad during conflicts with the Goshute and Western Shoshone. Named for Civil War general-in-chief Henry Wager Halleck, it grew into a 20-building post and headquarters for the Nevada Military District. Its troops ranged far afield—against the Modoc in 1873, the Nez Perce in 1877, the Bannock in 1878, and the Apache in 1885. As the frontier quieted, the Army closed the fort in December 1886.

Lower Turkeyfoot Township, PA · est. 1947

Long before European settlers reached these ridges, Native people built and defended communities on the flat-topped hill above the valley. Archaeological study uncovered two villages ringed by wooden palisades, along with extensive traces of houses and burials, evidence of a settled and organized way of life. The finds date to the era around first European contact, when such fortified towns dotted the uplands of the region.

Palestine, TX

Around 1836, on the orders of Sam Houston himself, settlers raised a stockade fort on the public square of the frontier town of Houston, deep in what was then Houston County. The fort guarded pioneers on the edge of the young Republic of Texas until it was abandoned about 1841, and the town gave way to Palestine as the county seat a few years later. The old fort site was eventually absorbed into the home of Texas statesman John H. Reagan, who kept the name alive.

Palestine, TX

Raised in 1835–36 as a stockade and heavy-log blockhouse of the fledgling Republic of Texas, Fort Houston protected the settlers who founded the pioneer town of Houston. Friendly Indians came to trade at its walls even as wary families slept inside the twenty-five-foot-square blockhouse, and the men who gathered here formed one of the first Ranger units in Texas. The fort guarded a wide stretch of frontier until it was abandoned about 1841, its ground later folded into the home of statesman John H. Reagan.

Palestine, TX

When Joseph Jordan and William S. McDonald donated some 500 acres in 1835 for the town of Houston—later Fort Houston—the plan set aside a "public burying ground" that survives as the community's last physical trace. Its oldest marked grave dates to 1840, and among those laid to rest are victims of disease and frontier hardship, two San Jacinto veterans in unmarked graves, and, in a soldiers' plot marked by a boulder, veterans of the Republic of Texas and a War of 1812 soldier, General Nathaniel Smith. Though the town was abandoned after Palestine became county seat in 1846, the cemetery remains in use today.

Sierra Vista, AZ

Established by the U.S. Army in 1877 in the rugged country of southern Arizona, Fort Huachuca was a frontier post in the final campaigns against the Apache during the Indian Wars. It later became a home of the famed Buffalo Soldiers, the African American regiments who served across the Western frontier, and it remains an active installation today—now a National Historic Landmark. Few army posts trace such an unbroken line from the frontier era into the modern age.

Uvalde, TX

West of San Antonio the road forked toward El Paso and toward Eagle Pass on the Rio Grande, and travelers here "put on their guns" at the edge of contested country. During the Civil War, Fort Inge and Camp Dix anchored a thin Confederate and state defense line stretched a day's ride apart from the Red River to the Rio Grande, guarding against raids while wagon trains hauled cotton to Mexico in exchange for scarce goods. Though Uvalde County had voted heavily against secession, many local men served, and the war years brought hard times and renewed frontier attacks.

Ballard County, KY

In 1780, frontier commander George Rogers Clark built Fort Jefferson here as part of an ambitious plan conceived by Virginia's Governor Patrick Henry and carried on by his successor, Thomas Jefferson, to secure the young nation's western claims. The next year the Chickasaw, angered by settlement on their land, besieged the fort for five days until Clark arrived with reinforcements; the post was abandoned soon after. The strategic spot was resettled following the Jackson Purchase and later served as an important Union position in the Civil War.

South Centre Township, PA · est. 1948

During the Revolution the Susquehanna frontier was a war zone, and settlers here fortified a house on the riverbank as a refuge between 1778 and 1780 until raiders destroyed it. The violence along this valley was part of the wider frontier warfare that pitted settlers against British-allied Native nations far from the war's famous battlefields. In a later, more peaceful chapter, the ground passed to James Wilson, a signer of the Declaration and a framer of the Constitution.