As the United States prepares for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Pittsburgh may feel a bit of history envy. The focus of much of the nation’s festivities, for example, will be Philadelphia, where the Declaration was created.

Western Pennsylvania, meanwhile, was a trans- Allegheny backwater, its days at the forefront of American history to come.

This sells the region’s pre-revolutionary history short, and gives today’s Western Pennsylvanians a false impression that real history only kicked off with the emergence of Andrew Carnegie in the late 19th century. While the region and Pittsburgh have memorialized Fort Pitt and Fort Duquesne in the names of two bridges and a tunnel, it’s easy to forget, or never to know, just how important the Three Rivers were in colonial and global politics.

This aspect of the region’s history, as the essential and strategic gateway to the West, is thrown into sharp relief by the recent discovery of a long-lost George Washington historic site in Westmoreland County. The Post-Gazette’s Mary Ann Thomas reports that the Fort Ligonier Museum, in collaboration with researchers from Juniata College, has pinpointed the location of an infamous 1758 “friendly fire” incident that was a defining moment in the young officer’s life.

Washington led a small contingent out of Fort Ligonier to rendezvous with other Virginians to repel a French raiding party, but the other detachment of soldiers mistook Washington’s men for the enemy and opened fire. Over a dozen are said to have been killed, and Washington himself rode between the columns, knocking muskets away with his sword, to stop the bloodshed.

The museum is not making public the precise location of the incident, since it is today on private land and archaeologists continue to investigate. But it’s about 10 miles outside of the fort and today’s town of the same name.

The tragedy and its context make clear just how important these lands were to both sides in the French and Indian War, which was the North American theater of the global Seven Years Way between England and France and their respective allies. Control of this confluence of rivers determined control of huge swathes of what was then the West.

This was Washington’s fourth major expedition to what is now Western Pennsylvania. In 1753, he was sent on a diplomatic mission where he met Iroquois leaders near present-day Baden, Beaver County, and ended at Fort Le Boeuf in today’s Waterford, Erie County. We have advocated that this route be designated a National Historic Trail.

The next two years he followed (roughly) what is today U.S. Route 40 on ill-fated expeditions — the first ending in surrender at Fort Necessity (after kicking off the Seven Years War at Jumonville Glen) and the second ending in General Edward Braddock’s disaster on the banks of the Monongahela River.

In 1758, under the command of Gen. John Forbes, Washington and his men eventually found Fort Duquesne abandoned. Forbes named this strategic location “Pittsburgh,” after William Pitt the Elder, who led the British government during the war, and British troops constructed Fort Pitt over the next three years.

We hope that, eventually, the site of Washington’s tragic but heroic friendly fire incident will be preserved for the public, just as so many other French and Indian War sites have been. Western Pennsylvania has a rich pre-revolutionary history, which should be accentuated during next year’s 250th birthday festivities.

— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via TNS