When were the US Marines founded? A complete history of the Corps

The United States Marine Corps was founded on November 10, 1775, when the Second Continental Congress passed a resolution calling for two battalions of Marines to be raised as landing forces for the fleet. That date is still celebrated as the official birthday of the Corps, and still matters to every Marine who has earned the title. The modern USMC was legally re-established by Congress on July 11, 1798, but the tradition, the culture, and the institutional identity trace directly to that original resolution passed in Philadelphia.
Understanding when the Marines were founded means understanding more than a date. It means tracing a service branch that has fought in every major American conflict, adapted its mission from shipboard infantry to global expeditionary force, and built a culture of discipline and identity that sets it apart from every other branch of the U.S. Armed Forces. This guide covers the full history of the United States Marine Corps, from its origins in a Philadelphia tavern to its role in 21st-century operations worldwide.

On November 10, 1775, the Second Continental Congress passed a resolution: "two Battalions of Marines be raised" to serve as landing forces for the Continental Navy. The man tapped to lead them was Captain Samuel Nicholas, nominated by John Adams. By December 1775, Nicholas had recruited one battalion of 300 men in Philadelphia and the birth of the Marines was underway.
The early recruiting effort is often associated with Tun Tavern in Philadelphia, a meeting place that has become one of the enduring symbols of the Corps's founding, though historians note it was one of several locations used in the process. What matters more than the venue is the mission: these first Marines were created as naval infantry, men who could fight at sea and on shore, serving a Continental Navy that was outgunned and outmanned from the start.
That founding date, November 10, is celebrated every year as the Marine Corps Birthday. The tradition includes a formal cake-cutting ceremony where the first slice goes to the oldest Marine present, who passes it to the youngest, a practice that reinforces the connection between those who came before and those who carry the mission forward.

The first Marines were defined by a dual role that remains central to the Corps today: they fought at sea and on shore. Aboard Continental Navy ships, they served as sharpshooters positioned in the rigging, picking off enemy officers and crew during ship-to-ship engagements. They enforced discipline on the vessel, guarded officers, and formed landing parties for raids ashore. The model was taken directly from British naval practice, and then adapted and improved.
Their first major test came early. In March 1776, Continental Marines conducted one of America's first amphibious operations: a raid on Nassau in the Bahamas, where they seized Fort Montagu and Fort Nassau, capturing British ammunition and naval stores. The operation was small by modern standards, but it established the template, Marines landing from ships, fighting their way ashore, securing a military objective that would define the Corps for the next 250 years.
By January 1777, Marines were fighting on land too. General George Washington, retreating through New Jersey and needing veteran soldiers, ordered Captain Nicholas and his Marines to attach to the Continental Army. At the Battle of Princeton, an estimated 130 Marines fought under Washington's command, the first land engagement in the Corps's history. From the beginning, the Marines were adaptable: shipboard infantry one week, Continental Army infantry the next.
For more on the fundamentals of military structure and training, read our piece on how hard is US Marine training.

When the American Revolution ended, the Continental Navy and Continental Marines were disbanded in April 1783. The new United States had no standing navy and no need for naval infantry, or so it seemed. That changed quickly. By the late 1790s, with tensions rising over French attacks on American shipping in the undeclared Quasi-War with France, Congress acted. On July 11, 1798, the United States Marine Corps was legally established as a permanent military branch under the Act "Establishing and Organizing a Marine Corps."
This is why the USMC technically has two founding dates: November 10, 1775 as the Continental Marines, and July 11, 1798 as the permanent, legally constituted corps of the United States. The Corps celebrates the earlier date as its birthday, acknowledging the full lineage of the institution, not just its legal reestablishment.
By 1834, Congress further formalized the Corps's status through the Act for the Better Organization of the Marine Corps, stipulating that the Corps was part of the Department of the Navy as a sister service to the Navy, distinct, but operating under the same civilian department head.

The early decades of the permanent Corps were defined by expeditionary action, exactly the role that would come to characterize the USMC for the next two centuries. The most famous early operation was the First Barbary War (1801–1805), when Marine First Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon led 8 Marines and approximately 500 mercenaries in a march across the Libyan desert to attack the city of Derna. The operation, "to the shores of Tripoli", is immortalized in the Marines' Hymn and gave Marine officers their distinctive Mameluke sword, modeled on the weapon presented to O'Bannon after the battle.
During the War of 1812, Marines served aboard Navy ships in the famous frigate duels of the war and held the center of General Andrew Jackson's defensive line at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, one of the most decisive and one-sided American victories of the conflict. Their marksmanship and discipline in defensive actions built a reputation that would follow the Corps forward.
In the Mexican-American War (1846–1848), Marines made their famous assault on Chapultepec Palace in Mexico City, the "Halls of Montezuma" referenced in the Marines' Hymn. The assault was part of a broader Army operation under General Winfield Scott, with roughly 40 Marines among the approximately 500-man storming force. The action was real, the fighting was fierce, and it became part of the institutional memory the Corps carries to this day.
By 1868, under Commandant Jacob Zeilin, the Corps formally adopted the Marine Corps emblem (the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor) and around 1883 adopted its current motto, Semper Fidelis (Always Faithful). The institution was taking the shape it would hold for the next 150 years.

When the United States entered World War I in April 1917, the Marine Corps numbered just over 13,000 enlisted personnel and 511 officers. By the armistice on November 11, 1918, it had grown to 70,000 enlisted and 2,400 officers. The expansion was driven in part by the Corps's reputation and that reputation was forged most sharply at Belleau Wood in June 1918.
The six-week battle in a French forest outside Paris became the defining engagement of the Corps in WWI. Marine Corps lore holds that German soldiers, impressed and alarmed by the ferocity of the American Marines, nicknamed them "Teufelshunde" - Devil Dogs. The historical record on the German origin of the term is disputed, but the nickname stuck and remains part of the Corps's identity to this day. The battle cost the Marines more casualties than in their entire previous history combined and established the Corps as a combat force of the first order.
WWI also saw the first women enlist in the Marine Corps. Opha May Johnson joined the Marine Corps Reserve in 1918, becoming the first female Marine. By war's end, 305 women had enlisted in the Corps.

World War II defined the modern Marine Corps. In the Pacific Theater, the USMC executed one of the most demanding and sustained amphibious campaigns in military history, a series of island assaults against fortified Japanese positions across thousands of miles of ocean. Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, Tinian, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, Okinawa: each name represents a battle that tested the Corps's doctrine, its equipment, and its people under extreme conditions.
The Battle of Iwo Jima, which began February 19, 1945, is arguably the most recognizable Marine engagement of the war. The island was heavily fortified, the fighting was brutal, and American forces took 26,000 casualties over five weeks. The image of Marines raising the flag on Mount Suribachi on February 23, 1945 (captured in Joe Rosenthal's photograph) became one of the most reproduced images in American history and the basis for the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Virginia.
By the end of the war, the Corps had grown from two brigades to six divisions, five air wings, and roughly 485,000 Marines. Nearly 87,000 were casualties, including close to 20,000 killed. Eighty-two Marines received the Medal of Honor. Some 600,000 Americans served in the Corps during WWII, a number that dwarfs every previous conflict by orders of magnitude.
The war also produced one of the Corps's most operationally significant contributions: the Navajo Code Talkers, a group of Native American Marines who used their language to create an unbreakable battlefield communications code that proved critical to victory in the Pacific.

The Korean War (1950–1953) opened with the Marine Corps at reduced strength, about 75,000 regulars, and ended with it expanded to 261,000, mostly reservists. The defining Marine engagement was the Battle of Chosin Reservoir in late 1950, where the 1st Marine Division, outnumbered and encircled by Chinese forces, fought its way out in brutal winter conditions and inflicted massive casualties on its pursuers. The withdrawal, 78 miles through freezing terrain under constant attack, is studied in military schools as one of the most disciplined fighting retreats in modern history. Thirty thousand Marines were killed or wounded in Korea; 42 received the Medal of Honor.

Vietnam was the longest war in Marine Corps history up to that point. Marines operated primarily in the Northern I Corps region of South Vietnam, engaged simultaneously in guerrilla warfare against the Viet Cong and conventional combat against the North Vietnamese Army. The Battle of Hue and the Battle of Khe Sanh, both in 1968, were among the most intense urban and siege engagements the Corps fought in any war.
The Combined Action Program, a less-publicized but operationally significant Marine initiative, embedded small Marine units with Vietnamese villages to conduct counterinsurgency and train local forces, an early model of the advise-and-assist approach that would resurface in later conflicts. By the end of the war, 13,091 Marines had been killed in action, 51,392 had been wounded, and 57 Medals of Honor had been awarded. Because of rotation policies, more Marines were deployed to Vietnam than to World War II.
The aftermath was difficult. The Corps hit a low point in the late 1970s as it worked to rebuild discipline and readiness. The recovery (discharging the most delinquent, improving recruits, reforming the NCO Corps) is itself a case study in institutional resilience.

As of December 2024, the United States Marine Corps has approximately 168,500 active duty personnel and around 33,000 in reserve. The Corps is organized around the Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF), a self-contained combined-arms structure that integrates ground, aviation, and logistics elements under a single command. The MAGTF is the operational building block of everything the Corps does, it can deploy rapidly, operate independently, and sustain itself in the field without relying on another service for core functions.
The three principal Marine Corps bases for operating forces are Camp Pendleton on the West Coast (home to I Marine Expeditionary Force), Camp Lejeune on the East Coast (home to II MEF), and Camp Butler in Okinawa, Japan (home to III MEF). Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia is headquarters for Marine Corps Combat Development Command and is often called the "Crossroads of the Marine Corps." The largest single Marine installation is Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms in California, home to the Corps's most complex combined-arms live-fire training.
Every Marine (officer or enlisted) begins at boot camp. Enlisted recruits train for 13 weeks at either Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego or Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, the longest recruit training of any American military service. The doctrine is consistent: every Marine is a rifleman first. Regardless of MOS, every Marine completes the same basic combat training and every officer goes through the same infantry-focused curriculum at The Basic School at Quantico. For more on what that training actually demands, read our guide on how to prepare for basic training.
If you're considering joining, our guide to joining the US Marine Corps covers the requirements, the process, and what to expect in 2026.

The Eagle, Globe, and Anchor (often abbreviated EGA) is the official emblem of the United States Marine Corps, adopted on November 19, 1868, under Commandant Jacob Zeilin. Each element carries specific meaning: the eagle represents the nation the Corps serves; the globe reflects the global nature of Marine operations; and the anchor signifies the Corps's close relationship with the Navy and its amphibious mission.
The EGA appears on the Marine Corps flag, the seal, and the uniforms of every Marine. It is one of the most recognizable military symbols in the United States. Marines commonly refer to earning their EGA as receiving "the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor", the moment a recruit officially becomes a Marine at the end of boot camp. The Marine Corps emblem is not just a logo; it marks the completion of a demanding process and entry into a specific institutional identity.
The official colors of the Marine Corps are scarlet and gold, established alongside the emblem and seal. For more on USMC uniforms and their distinct visual identity, see our overview of US military clothing and camouflage patterns.

The Marine Corps adopted its current motto, Semper Fidelis (Latin for "Always Faithful") around 1883. Before that, the Corps had used several mottoes over the years, including "Fortitudine" (With Fortitude) and "By Sea and by Land." Semper Fidelis stuck because it captures something central to the Corps's institutional identity: absolute loyalty, to the mission, to the unit, to the country.
The motto appears on the Marine Corps seal, is used as a common greeting among serving and veteran Marines (often shortened to Semper Fi), and is also the name of the official march of the Corps, composed by John Philip Sousa. Sousa, who enlisted as a Marine apprentice at age 13 and served two periods with the Marine Band, wrote the march in 1888, it remains the official march of the Corps today.

250 years of Marine Corps history is a history of people who showed up prepared, with the right training, the right mindset, and the right gear. That starts at the ground level. Whether you're preparing for United States Marine Corps boot camp, deploying in the field, or serving in law enforcement, the footwear you carry matters.
Explore the full range of Tactical Boots built for military environments and Duty Footwear designed for sustained operational wear at Garmont Tactical. For more on training, readiness, and performance, visit the Garmont Tactical Blog. And for a closer look at what the Marines specifically use in the field, read our piece on what tactical footwear do the Marines use.
Standards change. Readiness doesn't.

The United States Marine Corps traces its founding to November 10, 1775, when the Second Continental Congress resolved to raise two battalions of Continental Marines in Philadelphia. That date is celebrated annually as the Marine Corps Birthday. The modern, permanent USMC was legally established by Congress on July 11, 1798, in preparation for the Quasi-War with France. Both dates are historically significant; the Corps celebrates the earlier one.

The first Marines were raised as naval infantry for the Continental Navy during the American Revolutionary War. They served aboard ships as sharpshooters, enforced discipline, and formed landing parties for raids ashore. Their first major amphibious operation was the raid on Nassau in the Bahamas in March 1776. Captain Samuel Nicholas, nominated by John Adams, was the first commandant. By early 1777, Marines were also fighting on land under General Washington's command at the Battle of Princeton.

The Marine Corps and the Navy are two separate armed services, but both operate under the Department of the Navy. The Commandant of the Marine Corps and the Chief of Naval Operations each lead their respective branch independently, neither reports to the other. The Corps relies on the Navy for sealift, logistics, and medical support, and Marines deploy aboard Navy ships. But Marines have their own chain of command, training, doctrine, and institutional identity. They are not a subdivision of the Navy.

"Aye-aye" is a traditional naval expression meaning "I understand and will comply." Because the Marine Corps originated as naval infantry and shares deep institutional ties with the Navy, Marines adopted and retained naval language and customs. "Aye-aye, sir" is the formal acknowledgment of an order, a commitment to execute, not just an affirmation of understanding.