Fort Muncy: Three Times Built, Twice Destroyed

Near Muncy, on the West Branch of the Susquehanna River in Lycoming County, this ground once held a Revolutionary War frontier stronghold. Fort Muncy was built in seventeen seventy-eight, after the terrifying evacuation known as the Big Runaway, when settlers fled downriver ahead of British-allied raids. Colonel Thomas Hartley had the fort raised to protect the families returning to their farms.

It stood close to Fort Brady, the fortified home of Captain John Brady. The story of this fort tells you something about the grinding nature of frontier warfare: battles here were not dramatic set pieces but a constant struggle to hold settlements together, with farms abandoned, burned, and reclaimed again, each cycle costing lives and years of labor.