Markers

Some pieces of Erie’s past don’t announce themselves — they simply remain. A boundary stone at East 6th and French, carved when the city was still deciding what it would become. A name etched into the bottom step of a North East porch, hinting at the family who once claimed that threshold. These are the Markers: the small, sturdy artifacts that outlast their original purpose and quietly anchor us to the people who came before. A boundary stone set at the foot of Parade Street in 1795 by surveyor Andrew Ellicott and General William Irvine as they laid out “a town to be called Erie.”

As this collection grows, it will gather everything from early city survey stones to mysterious doorstep engravings to the occasional cemetery oddity that refuses to fit neatly into any other category. They’re not grand, and they’re not trying to be — but each one is a breadcrumb in Erie’s long, winding story, waiting for someone curious enough to stop and look down.