A visitor returns to a familiar scene to refresh his memory, he looks for once familiar landmarks, and he notes, with approval or regret, whatever changes have come about. An armchair revisitation to Fort Loudoun has been on the whole reassuring. Since I wrote about it sixteen years ago, the fort has not been neglected. In 1968 its site became State property; in 1970 Harry E. Foreman added another book, Fort Loudon Sidelights, to his list of collectors' items; about the same time the Historical Society of Pennsylvania acquired a manuscript journal containing brief but valuable information on the fort; and this year [1976] Gary T. Hawbaker is publishing a history of Fort Loudoun.
As long ago as 1937 the novelist Neil H. Swanson tried to link Fort Loudoun with the Revolutionary War; we may therefore be able to resist repeating that experiment in this year of overflowing Bicentennialism, and try to take a more realistic look at Fort Loudoun, which in fact was built in 1756 in response to a grave crisis in Pennsylvania history, and was abandoned in 1765, nine years later, when that crisis had passed.
The emergency was of course the outbreak of the French and Indian War, the first war in which Pennsylvania was directly involved. Inexperienced in military matters and ill prepared to deal with them, the Province nevertheless succeeded, by early 1756, in raising paid troops and in establishing a line of fortified posts to defend its frontier against invasion.
As first established, the four posts west of the Susquehanna proved to be too widely separated for maintaining an effective patrol line, and too far from the settled country to be adequately supplied. After one of them, Fort Granville, was captured by the enemy at the end of July 1756, the Provincial forces fell back to a line marked by Fort Lyttleton (the only remaining fort of the original four), Fort Loudoun, Fort Morris (at Shippensburg), and Fort Carlisle.
During the nine years of its existence Fort Loudoun served two different purposes. From 1756 until the Forbes campaign in 1758, it was a link in the defensive chain garrisoned by Lieutenant Colonel John Armstrong's Second Battalion of the Pennsylvania Regiment. For the rest of its existence it was the easternmost post on the military supply line that ran westward to, and ultimately beyond, Fort Pitt. During these seven years it was used as a supply depot, lightly garrisoned by a diversity of troops, British and colonial. From time to time, at the beginning and end of campaigns, larger bodies of troops camped in the nearby fields. Fort Loudoun was not an original part of this revised defense line. Of the four posts in this line, Fort Lytdeton dated from December 1755, when work was begun on the original defense line; and work on the forts at Shippensburg and Carlisle had been undertaken even earlier on local initiative. In March 1756, when the first steps were taken to revamp the defenses, troops were stationed at McDowell's Mill (present Markes), two miles south of the later fort. The location was not satisfactory, however; five months later, on August 20, Lieutenant Colonel Armstrong reported to the Governor that "McDowels or thereabouts is a necessary Post, but the present Fort not defencible."
Considering the time and the place, the first army seen in Cumberland County was of quite respectable size. Made up entirely of British regulars, it comprised two foot regiments, a detachment of artillery, and three independent (or unregimented) companies. With these units at less than full strength, the whole force numbered about twelve thousand.