INSTITUTIONAL AWARDS
FACULTY AWARDS
National Park Service - American Battlefield Protection Program. $3,799 (subaward). (Jorden Hayes, Geosciences) “Fort Halifax Rediscovery Project” In the summer of 1756, as the Seven Years or French and Indian War engulfed British North America, a detachment of Colonial Militia under the command of Colonel William Clapham erected a 160-foot square fort along the Susquehanna River near the mouth of Armstrong Creek, in what’s now northern Dauphin County Pennsylvania. Fort Halifax was one of a chain of Colonial fortifications built along the river as militia depots and refuges for local settlers, and it played its role in the history of border raids and skirmishes along the Appalachian frontier for a little over a year, after which it was abandoned, partially dismantled, and forgotten. The suspected location of the fort was preserved in 2006 in a new municipal park, but the precise location remained unknown. In 2021, a SHPO and National Trust-supported Juniata College field school was implemented that brought together a partnership of academic researchers and students, deployed American veterans, and the non-profit Friends of Fort Halifax Park. The field school encountered the first concrete evidence for the former location of Colonial Fort Halifax (1756-1757). This included portions of the fort’s defensive works, interior structures, and artifacts associated with both Colonial troops and apparent Native American visitors to the fort. The proposed project will use technological innovations including magnetometry, metal detecting, drone enabled infrared LiDAR imaging, and traditional excavation techniques to define the site perimeter and seek additional evidence for the interaction of Native and Colonial populations at the site. This information will be crucial to the future management of the park, to the public interpretation of the park’s heritage, and to a new and more nuanced understanding of the relationship between British Colonial and Native American populations on the Pennsylvania frontier.