By Beaver County Business Staff
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Come this Saturday, Beaver will stir with more than crisp autumn air.
The 2025 Fort McIntosh Day—sponsored by the Beaver Area Heritage Foundation—beckons, celebrating a patch of ground where the Revolution once pitched its tents and made itself at home. At 10 a.m., the bluff above the Ohio River will become a time machine. By 4 p.m.—if you don’t mind freshly baked bread, quill-pen ink, and cannon fire—you’ll be convinced George Washington himself tracked mud across the parade ground.
The Backdrop
Fort McIntosh was thrown up in 1778 under orders from George Washington, who sent General Lachlan McIntosh to plant the Continental Army’s flag on the high ground at the confluence of the Beaver and Ohio Rivers. This was not just another frontier stockade: it was the first fort built by the Continental Army north of the Ohio River and the headquarters of the Western Department.
At one point, some 1,500 troops occupied the post—the largest American army west of the Alleghenies during the Revolution. Picture log walls, smoky chimneys, blacksmiths clanging away, and soldiers wondering why they couldn’t have been stationed someplace with a little nightlife, like Philadelphia.
A Strategic Thorn in the British Side
The fort was no mere ornament. Its location thumbed a nose at Britain’s control of Detroit, where the Crown and its Native allies plotted frontier raids. By plopping down at the mouth of the Beaver River, the Americans built a wooden speed bump across the British supply line. It was the 18th-century equivalent of blocking traffic on Route 51 with a dump truck—annoying, effective, and very hard to ignore.
The Treaty That Changed the Map
In January 1785, Fort McIntosh became something more than barracks and bastions: it became a conference room. Representatives of the Wyandot, Delaware, Ojibwe, and Odawa nations met here with U.S. commissioners George Rogers Clark, Richard Butler, and Arthur Lee. The resulting Treaty of Fort McIntosh ceded huge tracts of land in the Ohio Country to the fledgling United States.
This treaty cleared the way for the Land Ordinance of 1785, which laid out a rational system for surveying and selling land in tidy squares. For better or worse, it was the blueprint for the orderly settlement of the Northwest Territory—though “orderly” is in the eye of the settler.
Birthplace of the U.S. Army
When the Continental Army disbanded, Fort McIntosh stayed busy. It became the first permanent peacetime post of the First American Regiment, the embryo of today’s U.S. Army. That regiment survives as the Presidential Honor Guard—the “Old Guard” of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Division.
So if you see a sharp young soldier pacing in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington, you can trace his lineage back to this bluff in Beaver, where muskets rusted and muddy boots squelched.
Did George Washington Sleep Here?
Now, about that title. Did the Father of His Country actually spend the night inside these walls? The documentary record is silent. Washington ordered the fort built, followed its progress, and counted on it to hold the line—but there’s no proof he ever dropped his tri- corner on a bedpost here.
Still, it’s a pleasing thought. After all, Washington seemed to sleep everywhere else. If you see a reenactor this weekend swearing he did—smile, applaud, and keep one eyebrow cocked. History loves ambiguity; tourism loves certainty.
What to Expect Saturday
Fort McIntosh Day promises more than dry historical facts. Expect:
- Hands-on activities: wooden guns, hoop-rolling, quill pens, and colonial games.
- Demonstrations: baking, blacksmithing, sewing, laundry, even 18th-century medicine.
- Military pageantry: regimental drills and cannon fire, courtesy of Fort McIntosh’s own and Wayne’s 4th Sub-Legion.
- Suttlers’ Row: books, paintings, jewelry—because nothing says history like a souvenir table.
Reflection Behind the Palisades
There’s something wryly satisfying in knowing that this quiet riverfront once held a garrison that shaped the course of the nation. Fort McIntosh guarded a frontier, deterred a superpower, hosted a treaty, and birthed the U.S. Army. Not bad for a fort that didn’t last a decade.
So did Washington sleep here? Probably not. But the fort he ordered into being is still wide awake in our history. And on Saturday, you can walk its grounds, watch the cannon roar, and maybe roll a hoop down River Road.
If You’re Going …
Fort McIntosh Day
Saturday, September 20, 2025
10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
700 block River Road, Beaver, PA 15009
FREE, family-oriented
Come for the cannon, stay for the quill ink. History lives here.
