Abstract
In the early spring of 1754, John Harris, operator of a trading post and ferry on the Susquehanna River, described for the provincial government two paths of travel through the Pennsylvania wilderness to the Native American village of Logs Town (present-day Ambridge) on the Ohio River. Titled "An Acct. of the Road to Logs Town on the Allegeheney River, Taken by John Harris, 1754," his sketch provides marvelous details of the natural and man-made features of backcountry Pennsylvania on the eve of the French and Indian War. Recorded as a deposition before Provincial Secretary Joseph Shippen, Harris's description is one of several made for the government by frontier traders, among them Andrew Montour, Hugh Crawford, and Phillip Davies. But Harris's deposition in particular would later cause historical confusion about the dimensions of one of the landscape features he listed—the Standing Stone.
