Fort Pitt Museum, Pittsburgh
Near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
At the very tip of Pittsburgh's Golden Triangle, where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers meet to form the Ohio, stands Point State Park and the Fort Pitt Museum. The French built Fort Duquesne here in seventeen fifty-four, claiming the Forks of the Ohio as the key to controlling North America. In seventeen fifty-eight, British General John Forbes marched on the fort with a larger force, and the French burned it to the ground rather than surrender.
The British rebuilt on a massive scale, constructing Fort Pitt between seventeen fifty-nine and seventeen sixty-one. In seventeen sixty-three the fort withstood a forty-day siege by Lenape and Shawnee warriors during Pontiac's War. From those walls grew Pittsburgh.
The museum today occupies a reconstructed bastion and tells the full story of how this muddy confluence became the birthplace of a city that would fuel an industrial nation.
