Additional Activities & Attractions will accompany the 250th. Anniversary Celebration throughout 2026 – so please check their website for details.

Just an hour’s drive east of Syracuse, Fort Stanwix proudly identifies itself as the place where the “American flag was first flown in battle.”

According to local legend, on August 3, 1777, the first stars and stripes were created out of “a soldier’s white shirt, strips of fabric from a woman’s red petticoat and the blue straps from Captain Abraham Swartwout’s cloak.”

The star fort was built to guard a portage known as the Oneida Carrying Place during the French and Indian War. Fort Stanwix National Monument, a reconstructed structure built by the National Park Service, now occupies the site and a new multi-million dollar visitor’s center opened in 2005.