Five national park sites stretch across about 120 miles in southwest Pennsylvania near Pittsburgh. Four of those sites commemorate people and events from colonial through industrial times. The fifth site commemorates an event early in this century which will be visited in a future post.

Friendship Hill National Historic Site 1789-1832

Five years after Swiss-born Albert Gallatin emigrated to America in 1780, he became a citizen by swearing allegiance to the State of Virginia. The next year he bought a 370 acre farm on the western edge of the new country on a hill rising above the Monongahela River in western Pennsylvania.

After helping draft the Pennsylvania constitution, he was elected as U.S. Senator and then Congressman. He expanded his farm to over 1,000 acres, built his home and established factories in the area. As he promoted western development of the new country, Thomas Jefferson selected him as his Treasury Secretary, where he helped finance the Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark expedition, and development of a national road and canal system. He continued in the position under President Madison and remains the longest serving Secretary of Treasury. His statue stands outside the U.S. Treasury building. When I worked for the Treasury Employees Union, the Gallatin Award was the highest achievement a member could receive.

He served on the delegation for the Treaty of Ghent to end the War of 1812, served as U.S. Minister to France and Great Britain, and helped establish New York University. He published many studies on Native American Indian languages and tribes, and theorized on their movement to the continent from Asia. In 1843, at age 83, he declined President Tyler’s request to again serve as Treasury Secretary. By 1832, he sold his western properties including Friendship Hill. He died in 1849.

The park has over nine miles of trails through woods and along the Monongahela River. When we visited, a nearby high school was celebrating homecoming, so the grounds were filled with teenagers in high fashion recalling the soiree Gallatin held on the grounds for the Revolutionary hero the Marquis de Lafayette as huge crowds greeted him across America.

Ft. Necessity National Battlefield 1754, 1827

The opening battle of the French and Indian War was fought at Fort Necessity in 1754. After his commander was killed, 22 year old George Washington was promoted to colonel, and he commanded the small fort and stockade his troops built in the Great Meadows, an unusually open area in the wooded terrain. About 25 miles from Friendship Hill sits Fort Necessity.

Fort Necessity National Battlefield, Pennsylvania

Washington commanded nearly 400 British American troops, but he failed to retain his Indian allies. After a nearly all day battle on July 3 against a larger French and Indian force, Washington surrendered for the only time in his career. The loss of the battle and many soldiers significantly affected his command of American forces twenty years later. The French and British would continue to fight across the Ohio River valley, the Great Lakes, the Atlantic, India and Europe for the next nine years—and call the conflict the Seven Years’ War. Hmmm.

National Road Heritage Corridor — Mount Washington Tavern

The park site also commemorates the National Road that Albert Gallatin helped lead to passage through Congress. Construction began in 1811 in Cumberland, Maryland, and ended in 1839 in Vandalia, Illinois by the state capitol before it moved that year to Springfield. The construction of the National Road to that western outpost undoubtedly influenced Abraham Lincoln who was then serving his one term in Congress and working for national infrastructure expansion. (Coincidently, Vandalia and Friendship Hill are both located in counties named “Fayette”—two of many locations across the country named for the Revolutionary hero after his tour of the country.

The tavern shown above was one of the first buildings along the National Road. George Washington had acquired the lands around the old battlefield, and it was eventually sold to Judge Nathaniel Ewing who built this tavern in 1827 on the edge of the battlefield next to the new Road.

Johnstown Flood National Memorial 1889

For now we’ll go past the next National Memorial for a later visit and head on another 70 miles to the site of the May 31, 1889 dam break and flood that was one of our country’s greatest disasters leaving over 2,200 dead in a flash.

Unger Farmhouse, Johnstown Flood National Memorial

The Unger Farmhouse overlooked Lake Conemaugh formed by the earthen dam across the South Fork of the Conemaugh River. When the dam was repaired and raised in 1879, engineers recommended improving the outlets to drain high water. The recommendations were ignored. Unger was president of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club and wealthy industrialists from Pittsburgh built “cottages” above the lake. Heavy rains in May continued until the water finally went over the top of the dam since there were inadequate outlets. At 3:10 p.m. the dam broke with 20 million tons of water and debris 75 feet high flying down the river wiping out bridges, towns, train tracks, and within an hour reached Johnstown.

The large mill town, on one end of the Allegheny Portage Railroad was destroyed leaving thousands homeless and causing rampant disease. Clara Barton led the American Red Cross on its first major relief effort here as a flood of help came from around the world.

Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site 1834-1857

The National Road was but one effort to open access to the West. New York State opened the Erie Canal in 1825 to link the coast with the Great Lakes. Pennsylvania’s effort to catch up was called the Main Line of Public Works. In 1832, Philadelphia began expanding its new railroad 82 miles west to Columbia on the Susquehanna River. There a canal was being built to take traffic further west. Meanwhile, another canal was being built east of Pittsburgh to Johnston. The problem: 36 miles and the 3,000 foot tall Allegheny Mountains stood between the two canals.

Engine House 6 on the summit of the Allegheny Portage

The solution was to create a railroad line that was like the canal’s locks to connect the two canals and take boats, goods and passengers between the canals. The train tracks would go up five inclines on each side of the summit with levels in between — a railroad to portage the canal traffic.

Interpretive Ranger stone cutting demonstration

The tracks were laid on huge stone blocks that would be quarried along the track. Using hand drills, the immigrant workers broke off stone blocks, hewed them to the correct shape and attached anchors for the tracks to be attached to. A full 12 hour work day would produce one stone.

In addition to the locomotives moving freight and passengers up each level and incline, there would be an engine house at the top of the incline where stationary steam engines would raise and lower rail cars by hemp cord and then iron cords.

Passengers and crew would have breaks of 10 to 20 minutes at the engine houses when the freight was transferred from one incline to the next. Like today’s rest stops on Interstate Highways, taverns would open to serve the passengers and workers. The Lemon House Tavern was built in the 1830s.

Lemon House Tavern, Allegheny Portage National Historic Site

The central hallway would be the primary stop, though men could head to the bar or ladies and children to the parlor, or those with more time to the dining room.

My bridge engineer son tells me skew bridges are among the most challenging to design. Not unlike today’s contract bidding, the railroad line and local government had differing requirements and challenges for the engineers. The bridge to take the old wagon turnpike over the railroad tracks would need to be angled—or skewed—to satisfy both since the train tracks needed to be a straight line and the wagons couldn’t make right angle turns. A century later when a highway would be built, the road engineers had to figure out how to preserve the historically significant bridge and rail line, so the bridge still stands, now in the median of the roadway.

The mountain was conquered, and the Allegheny Portage Railroad was completed in 1834 and operated until 1857. The 23 day trip from between Philly and Pittsburgh was cut to four days. Hope you enjoyed the ride.

Previously protected as a state heritage site, Camp Nelson was established as Kentucky’s first National Monument in 2018. Twenty miles south of Lexington, the Monument preserves the location where tens of thousands of enslaved people emancipated themselves. Here’s the entrance from the highway which was the main road even prior to the Civil War.

The camp was established in early 1863 as a supply depot in preparation for the U.S. Army’s campaign into eastern Tennessee and through the Cumberland Gap (more images from the Cumberland Gap in future posts.) The Depot Trail at the Monument explains the huge amount of supplies of beans, coffee, horses, wagons, etc. that supported union troops that was conveyed through Camp Nelson. The bakery made nearly 7 tons of bread a day, though most of that was consumed by the soldiers and staff at the camp itself.

So who built the camp? A great portion of the fortification, warehouses, and barracks were built by paying Kentucky slaveholders to use their enslaved peoples. How’s that possible when the Emancipation Proclamation was signed on January 1, 1863? The Proclamation freed people enslaved in states that rebelled against the United States, and Kentucky was not a rebel state so slavery was legal there. In the image below are the remains of one fort on the perimeter of the camp which was built primarily by 3,000 slaves while their owners were paid for their labor.

The army began to use the camp to train black men who escaped from Confederate states to join the army. Again this did not apply to enslaved blacks in Kentucky. However, Kentucky was not meeting its quota of supplying white men as soldiers, so in March 1864 the governor signed an order that Kentucky slaveholders could voluntarily agree to let their slaves join the army—and get paid $300 for each one who did. Nevertheless without their slavemaster’s consent, many Kentucky slaves escaped to the camp to join the army. The army then permitted vigilante squads into the camp to seize these fugitives. The ensuing violence led General Lorenzo Thomas to order that all black males could enter the camp to become soldiers, and eventually over 10,000 enslaved men obtained their freedom this way.

However, this emancipation only applied to the men who enlisted in the U.S. Colored regiments. Women, children, and those not eligible to serve could not be freed. These people were called refugees, and had no certain legal status and were still considered runaway slaves. The refugees were allowed to live in a shanty village that grew within the camp. Also, many white families from unionist Eastern Tennessee became refugees in the camp as the men enlisted in the Union Army and formed white Tennessee Union regiments. Only one structure from the Civil War era remains. The Oliver Perry house was built in the 1840s, and the Army converted the house to officer quarters when the camp was established, and returned it to the family after the War.

Kentucky slaveowners pressured the Army to end the refugee status of their slaves, and in late November 1864 Commander Speed Fry ordered soldiers to forcibly remove the refugees from the camp—many the wives and children of union soldiers—and to burn down the refugee camp. Soon over 100 of the expelled refugees died of exposure and disease. Camp Nelson Chief Quartermaster Hall and a neighboring abolitionist minister began a campaign of protest. On November 28, the New York Tribune ran a front page story writing: “At this moment, over four hundred helpless human beings....having been driven from their homes by United States soldiers, are now lying in barns and mule sheds, wandering through the woods....literally starving, for no other crime than their husbands and fathers having thrown aside the manacles of Slavery to shoulder Union muskets.” Fry’s supervisor ordered the policy of expulsion be reversed, and Secretary of War Stanton ordered that all refugees, regardless of ties to the Union Army be given permanent protection in the camp.

The Union Army was moving further south into Confederate territory and General Grant wanted to close Camp Nelson. However, General Sherman said the training grounds and refugee protection was still important and the camp remained open. Former soldier barracks started being converted into quarters for the refugees. None of the barracks remain, but the Kentucky Heritage society rebuilt one for use as a visitor center which is now closed because of Covid-19.

By December 1964, the army called much of the area the Home for Colored Refugees, and built a mess hall, dormitory, school, and teachers quarters. In March 1865, Congress passed legislation freeing the wives and children of U.S. Colored Troops. By the time of the ratification of the 13th Amendment in December 1865 prohibiting slavery throughout the county, over 10,000 black soldiers had already earned their freedom through enlistment at Camp Nelson.

Pennsylvania Parks --1754, 1789-1832, 1834-57, 1889

Camp Nelson National Monument, Kentucky

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