Qualla: Fort Pitt: Where Three Rivers Decided a Continent https://qualla.com/fort-pitt-pennsylvania en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:15 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/d/p/p/n/fort-pitt-pennsylvania-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Fort Pitt: Where Three Rivers Decided a Continent https://qualla.com/fort-pitt-pennsylvania Fort Pitt: Where Three Rivers Decided a Continent: Introduction https://qualla.com/fort-pitt-pennsylvania/ Photo credit Downtown_Pittsburgh_May_2008.jpg: Allie Caufield derivative work: GrapedApe (talk), CC BY 2.0. Three rivers meet at a single point in western Pennsylvania, and for a century that junction was the most contested real estate on the American frontier. The French built Fort Duquesne here in 1754 to control the Ohio Country. The British destroyed it and raised Fort Pitt in its place, naming it after Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder. Native nations besieged it. Revolutionaries garrisoned it. And when the fighting finally stopped, the fort dissolved into a city that kept the name: Pittsburgh. Today a single brick blockhouse from 1764 stands in Point State Park, the oldest surviving structure in the city, quietly marking the spot where empires collided.

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Image: Downtown_Pittsburgh_May_2008.jpg: Allie Caufield derivative work: GrapedApe (talk) | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/p/p/n/fort-pitt-pennsylvania-wp/dppn-fort-pitt-where-three-rivers-decided-a-continent-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Fort Pitt: Where Three Rivers Decided a Continent: The Forks of the Ohio https://qualla.com/fort-pitt-pennsylvania/ Photo credit Kevin Myers No machine-readable author provided. SalomonCeb assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0. The strategic logic was obvious to everyone who looked at a map. Where the Allegheny flows south and the Monongahela flows north, they merge to form the Ohio River, the great highway into the continental interior. Whoever controlled this fork controlled trade, movement, and power...

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Image: Kevin Myers No machine-readable author provided. SalomonCeb assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/p/p/n/fort-pitt-pennsylvania-wp/dppn-fort-pitt-where-three-rivers-decided-a-continent-the-forks-of-the-ohio.mp3 0:06 2 full Fort Pitt: Where Three Rivers Decided a Continent: A Pentagram in the Wilderness https://qualla.com/fort-pitt-pennsylvania/ Photo credit Public domain. Captain Harry Gordon of the 60th Royal American Regiment designed the replacement: a massive pentagram-shaped fortification with bastions at each star point, built between 1759 and 1761. Named Fort Pitt, it was the largest and most sophisticated British fort on the frontier. The ...

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Image: Public domain

]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/p/p/n/fort-pitt-pennsylvania-wp/dppn-fort-pitt-where-three-rivers-decided-a-continent-a-pentagram-in-the-wilderness.mp3 0:06 3 full Fort Pitt: Where Three Rivers Decided a Continent: Siege, Smallpox, and Pontiac's War https://qualla.com/fort-pitt-pennsylvania/ Photo credit Barbara (WVS), CC BY-SA 4.0. Permanence attracted enemies. In 1763, the Lenape and Shawnee besieged Fort Pitt as part of Pontiac's War, an uprising against colonial encroachment and broken treaties. The fort proved too strong to take by force. During negotiations, Captain Simeon Ecuyer gave two Delaware emis...

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Image: Barbara (WVS) | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/p/p/n/fort-pitt-pennsylvania-wp/dppn-fort-pitt-where-three-rivers-decided-a-continent-siege-smallpox-and-pontiacs-war.mp3 0:06 4 full Fort Pitt: Where Three Rivers Decided a Continent: Revolution's Western Front https://qualla.com/fort-pitt-pennsylvania/ Photo credit Bernard Ratzer, Public domain. Fort Pitt found a second life during the American Revolution as headquarters for the western theater. While British forces held Fort Detroit, the Continental Congress dispatched commissioners to Pittsburgh in 1777, including Colonel Samuel Washington, George Washington's younger ...

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Image: Bernard Ratzer | Public domain

]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/p/p/n/fort-pitt-pennsylvania-wp/dppn-fort-pitt-where-three-rivers-decided-a-continent-revolutions-western-front.mp3 0:06 5 full Fort Pitt: Where Three Rivers Decided a Continent: What Remains at the Point https://qualla.com/fort-pitt-pennsylvania/ Photo credit Chris Light, CC BY-SA 4.0. By the 20th century, Fort Pitt existed only as archaeology. Pittsburgh commissioned excavations that revealed the fort's foundations, then reconstructed the Monongahela Bastion to house the Fort Pitt Museum. The reconstructed bastion is visible from Mount Washington, a reminder o...

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Image: Chris Light | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/p/p/n/fort-pitt-pennsylvania-wp/dppn-fort-pitt-where-three-rivers-decided-a-continent-what-remains-at-the-point.mp3 0:06 6 full