Fort McIntosh
Beaver, Beaver County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
The first U.S. military post north of the Ohio. Located on River Road and occupying the area between Bank, Insurance, and Market Streets. Built in 1778 and scene of Treaty of Fort McIntosh in 1785; also a survey base. Abandoned 1790-91.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Built in 1778 during the Revolution, Fort McIntosh was the first military post the young United States raised north of the Ohio River, a foothold in contested Indian country. In 1785 it hosted the Treaty of Fort McIntosh, one of the early agreements by which the new republic pressed Native nations to cede lands in the Northwest Territory, and it also served as a base for surveying that opening frontier. The garrison was abandoned around 1790-91 as the line of settlement moved on.
Why it matters
Fort McIntosh marks the first assertion of United States military authority beyond the Ohio, and the treaty signed there set the pattern for how the new nation acquired the Northwest lands.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related events
- · Treaty of Fort McIntosh, 1785
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Legionville
Harmony Township, PA · est. 1946
Through the winter of 1792-93, General Anthony Wayne drilled the newly formed Legion of the United States at this camp on the Ohio, turning raw recruits into a disciplined fighting force. The training paid off in 1794 when Wayne's army defeated a Native confederacy at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, breaking Indigenous resistance in the Northwest Territory. Legionville is remembered as one of the first formal basic-training encampments in American military history.
Friedennsstadt - PLAQUE
North Beaver Township, PA · est. 1922
This stone marks Friedensstadt, or "City of Peace," a mission village of Christian Delaware Indians founded here in the early 1770s under the guidance of Moravian missionaries. Many of its people had followed the same faith from earlier settlements at Wyalusing and along the Allegheny, moving repeatedly to stay clear of the mounting violence of the frontier. The community's long westward journey eventually carried it to the Moravian missions of Gnadenhütten and Schoenbrunn in the Tuscarawas Valley of Ohio.
Friedensstadt
North Beaver Township, PA · est. 1948
By April 1773 the Christian Delaware of Friedensstadt, guided by the missionary John Heckewelder, abandoned their Beaver River town and resettled on the Muskingum River in what is now Ohio. There tragedy overtook them: on March 8, 1782, Pennsylvania militiamen murdered scores of these peaceful, unarmed converts at Gnadenhütten in one of the darkest atrocities of the Revolutionary frontier. The marker traces the thread from this quiet Pennsylvania mission to that infamous massacre.
Squaw Campaign
Union Township, PA · est. 1948
In the bitter winter of 1778, with the Revolution raging on the frontier, General Edward Hand marched some 800 militia out of Fort Pitt intending to strike a British supply depot near present-day Cleveland. Weather and poor roads doomed the expedition before it reached its target, and the frustrated force instead fell upon a small Native settlement in the river fork below this spot, killing a man and an elderly woman before turning home. The dismal, aimless outcome earned the venture a mocking name that has clung to it ever since.