Click here to watch a preview of the Fort Pitt Museum with KDKA's Dave Crawley and Museum Director Alan Gutchess.

Visitors to the Fort Pitt Museum will experience Western Pennsylvania’s early history through a variety of interactive stations, life-like museum figures, and recently added artifacts, including:

Life-like figures of several 18th century characters, including a new figure of King Beaver (known as Tamaqua), a Delaware Indian diplomat who suggested the English build a fort at the Forks of the Ohio, along with an American Indian hunter.

 
Updated interpretation of three recreated rooms that detail life inside the Fort from the 1750s, including a fur trader’s cabin, a casemate storage room for munitions, and a British soldiers’ barrack.

An enhanced object theatre showing life-like figures representing the three-sided struggle for control of the Forks of the Ohio – a French fur trader, British surveyor, and an American Indian family – along with a 10-minute introductory video.

A number of 18th century artifacts, including a recently acquired American Indian powderhorn featuring an underwater panther – an ancient symbol of power – common to many tribes of the eastern half of the United States.

Items from Gen. Braddock’s expedition, such as musket balls and rifle locks, along with Gen. Lafayette’s 1758 six-pounder cannon marked “La Embushcade” (“the ambusher”).

A newly displayed pewter writing desk inscribed with “Fort Pitt Province Store 1761” that belonged to Josiah Davenport, who was Ben Franklin’s nephew and a local fur trader authorized to receive American Indian captives returned to Fort Pitt at the end of the French & Indian War.

The recently conserved 16-foot diorama showing Pittsburgh and Fort Pitt in 1765 that has been restored to its original grandeur.

 

 

Following a visit to the Fort Pitt Museum, learn the full story of Western Pennsylvania's history at the Senator John Heinz History Center.