Forbes Road: Washington and Bouquet Choose a Route

Near this spot on July thirtieth, seventeen fifty-eight, two British colonial officers had a disagreement that shaped the future of western Pennsylvania. Colonel Henry Bouquet and Colonel George Washington met to debate which road General John Forbes should use to attack French Fort Duquesne at the forks of the Ohio River. Washington argued for the old Braddock road to the south, the same route where Braddock's army had been ambushed and destroyed three years earlier.

Bouquet favored a new route due west from Bedford. Forbes chose Bouquet's road. The army pushed through and occupied the ruins of Fort Duquesne on November twenty-fifth, seventeen fifty-eight.

The road they carved, ever after known as Forbes Road, opened the Pennsylvania interior to settlement and became one of the primary highways driving westward expansion through the colony.