History

The History of Point State Park: Protecting our most important historical asset

Years of unregulated traffic and inadequate maintenance have endangered one of the most important historical sites in Western Pennsylvania. We’ve put this page together to answer some frequently asked questions about the Park’s underrepresented historical value.

Just how historic is Point State Park?

It contains not only the archaeological remains of Fort Pitt but Fort Duquesne and the associated French village and cemetery, along with thousands of years of Native American occupation. The “Forks of the Ohio” is a registered National Historic Landmark (not just a National Register property), and the purpose of the National Landmarks program is to focus attention on properties of exceptional value to the nation as a whole rather than to a particular State or locality.

What about the Music Bastion? What is it?

Technically it is not a bastion but just the footer for one of the Fort’s bastions.

The Music Bastion footer—outlined by those large ditches cutting through the Great Lawn on the city side of the Park—are reconstructions from the 1960s. In the Earth underneath them lie the original walls of Fort Pitt—or what’s left after decades of potential damage from traffic and industry. It is vitally important that we preserve those historic remains by filling in the modern ditches in the manner recommended by archaeological experts.

But I thought that was Fort Pitt!

According to archaeologist Christine Davis, who conducted a study on the site:

“What is viewed on site today is an interpretation of Fort Pitt based on the work of landscape designers with the input of historians and archaeologists. Military features are reconstructed using mid-20th century bricks created by a local brickmaker based on the color and size of the original Fort Pitt bricks. Significant changes have been made to these features to accommodate the new land use.”

“The reconstruction looks nothing like the original archaeological feature. Although the quoins appear to be the original stones, they have been reset. The bricks appear to be modern replicas. Further, the feature has been reconstructed at a higher elevation than the original excavation.”

The reality is that we know less about the excavations of the 1960s than we’d like to. We do know that James Swauger, the head of the excavation team examined keeping the walls of the original Fort Pitt exposed, but they were too deep in the ground to properly maintain, and that he reconstructed the bastions in approximately the same place, about 8 feet higher up. Beyond that, records are incomplete.

So you’re going to preserve Fort Pitt by burying the bastions?

The process of preserving something by burying it is actually a standard practice in archeology, because we can use certain materials to insulate the buried artifacts from the disturbances caused by traffic, weather, and industry. This will allow us to excavate the site in the future.

Why not just excavate them now?

Urban excavations are often very expensive, and a project the size and complexity of Point State Park would be very challenging for a state and city in the process of building new economic sources. To give some perspective, the Army Corps of Engineers’ ambitious and valuable excavations in Leetsdale, PA, cost upwards of $7 million. It’s impossible to know an exact figure right now, but Point State Park has potentially more sites, more artifacts, is in the center of a city, and has a major highway running over it, so those excavations are probably not financially possible at this time.