Fort Pitt State Park

Fountain at the confluence

There are over 200 campsites in Racoon State Park, but now that the holiday weekend is done, what was a full park, probably has around 10 campers still here. Mary is having physical problems today and decided that she should rest. After lunch, I decided to go to Fort Pitt State Park. The museum explains the history of this area, focusing on the 1700s. This was contested land between the British, French, and the Indian tribes. The French knew that if they could control the Ohio river, they could control everything from their French colonies up in Canada to Louisiana. The British were looking at controlling the land westward from their colonies (many of which had charters for all lands west of the original colony). This eventually led to the French and Indian War, where the French first controlled this river junction with Fort Duquesne. The British attacked multiple times, finally gaining control and building their own Fort Pitt. The Indians didn’t want the colonists to take control of this land, so the treaty they signed with the British gave them all the land west of the Appalachian Mountains. But, of course, that didn’t stop colonists from continuing to move west, resulting in a war with the Indians. During the Revolutionary War, the Americans took over the Fort, as the British concentrated their forces further East. During the war, some tribes supported the British, other tribes formally declared themselves neutral. But the colonists couldn’t distinguish the tribes, and atrocities occurred from both sides. The Revolutionary War continued in this area for several years past the British surrender at Yorktown. After the war finally ended, Fort Pitt and West Point were the only two places where the American army kept permanent troops. I also learned that wampum was a belt of beads, not for use as money, but as a record of what was agreed in a treaty between Indian tribes, and that a “buck” now a synonym for a dollar, actually meant a deer buck pelt, and other fur belts were worth so many buck pelts.

Model of Fort Pitt