Fort Allen: Frontier Defense in Dunmore's War

Just south of here stood Fort Allen, a frontier blockhouse built by Christopher Truby during one of the most turbulent periods on Pennsylvania's western edge. Also known as Truby's Blockhouse, the fort served through Dunmore's War in seventeen seventy-four, the broader Indian wars of the era, and into the Revolutionary War. In seventeen seventy-four, settlers of Westmoreland County sent a petition from this fort directly to Governor John Penn, pleading for military aid in the face of threatened conflict.

The fort stood as a refuge and a symbol of the tenuous line between the colonial frontier and contested Indigenous territory. Today the site is marked as a reminder that western Pennsylvania's transition from frontier to settled country was neither quick nor peaceful.