Allegheny

The Allegheny River winds through wooded hills before meeting the Monongahela to form the Ohio. This junction and the valleys beyond it were home to Indigenous communities, including Seneca, Lenape and Shawnee people. In the eighteenth century the rivers became a focus of rivalry between France and Britain, as traders and soldiers entered a country already shaped by Indigenous diplomacy and settlement.

The French built Fort Duquesne at the forks of the Ohio in 1754. Four years later, as a British army approached, they burned and abandoned it. The British established Fort Pitt on the same strategic ground, and the settlement of Pittsburgh grew beside it. Allegheny County was created in 1788, taking its name from the river, while the waterways continued to connect the growing town with the Ohio country.