Fort Duquesne, Where Empires Collided

At the exact spot where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers join to become the Ohio, two empires fought for a generation over a triangle of muddy ground. That contest would determine which language, which laws, and which civilization would govern the interior of North America.

In the spring of seventeen fifty-four, a small Virginia colonial force began constructing a fort at this confluence. They did not get far. A French force under Sieur de Contrecoeur arrived, outnumbered them, and sent them packing. France then built Fort Duquesne, named for the Marquis Duquesne, governor of New France, and the fort became the anchor of French power in the Ohio Valley, a strategic chokepoint linking their Canadian settlements to Louisiana.

Britain's first serious attempt to take it ended in catastrophe. In July of seventeen fifty-five, Major General Edward Braddock led a column of nearly fourteen hundred British regulars and colonial troops south from Fort Cumberland, cutting a road through the wilderness toward Duquesne. Eight miles short of the fort, French regulars and their Native American allies struck from the forest. What followed was a rout. Nearly nine hundred British soldiers were killed or wounded. Braddock himself was shot through the lung and died four days later. Among those who survived and helped organize the retreat was a twenty-three-year-old Virginia colonel named George Washington.

For three more years the fort held. Then in November of seventeen fifty-eight, General John Forbes led a second and far larger British expedition overland. Realizing they could not withstand the force advancing toward them, the French burned Fort Duquesne to the ground and withdrew rather than surrender it. British troops arrived to find smoking ruins. Colonel George Washington was with this column too, his final action serving with the British Army. The British built Fort Pitt on the same ground, and a city grew up around it.