Fort Necessity and Friendship Hill: Two historic gems in the western hills of Pennsylvania

Connecting the French and Indian War, Lewis & Clark and the National Road

                                                                 Friendship Hill

In the Southwest corner of Pennsylvania, just about an hour shy of the Ohio state line, sit a couple of national park units that may not be on your radar.  I wouldn’t call them obscure, but being from the west coast I had not heard of either until my NPS passport led me there a few months ago.  Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin’s wilderness house at Friendship Hill National Historic Site and Fort Necessity National Battlefield, a small palisade built by then Lt. Colonel George Washington at the very beginning of the French & Indian War introduced me to history that I was only vaguely familiar with.  Exploring both sites and reading the Park Service’s interpretive panels opened my eyes to what was happening in this part of America back in the late 18^th/early 19^th centuries.

                                                             Craig at the Liberty Bell

My girlfriend Craig and I had spent most of the week grooving on the Revolutionary war sites in Philadelphia; NPS sites like the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall and Thaddeus Kosciuszko’s home and other interesting sites like Betsy Ross’ House and Elfreth’s Alley, the oldest residential street in America.  We were headed to Ohio to see Craig’s one year-old grandson, so planned our drive west on interstate 68 and then north on highway 40 into Uniontown, where we found food and lodging located centrally to both sites.  Our favorite spot was recommended by a local park ranger and is a great neighborhood Irish pub called O’Gillies. Hidden in a residential part of town, finding it was totally worth the extra effort.  Sitting with a pint of Guinness we planned our park trip for the next day. 

We started our park day with a short 30 minute drive south out of Uniontown to Friendship Hill.  I had heard of Albert Gallatin, but didn’t really know much about him other than Lewis & Clark named a river after him in Montana.  It turns out that Gallatin was a pretty influential guy.  He spent 13 years as Treasury Secretary for presidents Madison and Jefferson and in that role he was key to financing the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and the Lewis & Clark expedition in 1804.  His importance to that expedition is reflected in Gallatin being the namesake for one of the three rivers that join to form the Missouri…the other two rivers, also named by Lewis & Clark, are the Madison and the Jefferson.

Gallatin was Swiss-born and immigrated to the U.S. in 1780 when he was 19 years old.  He immediately saw the business opportunities in the new United States and got into land speculation.  In 1783, he and a partner looked west and purchased 120,000 acres in Virginia and in the Ohio River Valley.  He bought the 370 acre farm that is now Friendship Hill in 1786.  However, when his first wife died in 1789 shortly after the original brick house was finished, he threw himself into politics and spent less and less time at Friendship Hill.  His political career was extensive.  He served in the Pennsylvania Assembly where he helped write the Pennsylvania constitution, was elected as both a U.S. Senator and a three term Representative to Congress.  Later in life he was the U.S Minister to both France and Great Britain.  He helped negotiate the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812 and he was a founder of New York University.  But it was his tenure as Treasury Secretary from 1801 to 1814 that solidified his legacy as one of the great founders of this country.

                                                      Gallatin's desk at Friendship Hill

He wrote “A Sketch of the Finances of the United States” in 1796 that led to establishing the Ways and Means Committee in Congress.  He was an advocate for no public debt and his Treasury tenure saw the national debt cut in half while still financing the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis & Clark Expedition.  He advocated for and formally suggested a federally funded national system of roads and canals to link the country together in 1808.  While this idea was initially rejected by Congress, the National Road from Cumberland MD to the Ohio River Valley was ultimately started in 1811. 

The first permanent structure built on this bluff above the Monongahela River was a small brick house constructed just before Gallatin’s first wife Sophia died in 1789.  By all accounts she enjoyed living in this wilderness setting.  Once Gallatin got into politics and married Hannah Nicholson of New York City in 1793, he spent less and less time here as both his work responsibilities and Hannah’s dislike of “country living” kept him from Friendship Hill.  He only visited three times from 1801 to 1824.  His last visit was to host the Marques de Lafayette in 1825. 

Even though he spent very little time there, Gallatin was actively engaged in improving the property with an expansion of the original brick house in the 1820s.  But the final construction wasn’t what he had in mind when he was directing the design by letter from France, where he was the U.S. Minister, to his son, who was overseeing the expansion.  One can only imagine the communication challenges of designing a home in the wilderness while living in France when the mail went by boat and horseback and took months to get there.  For the full story, you’ll have to visit in person!  Gallatin sold the property in 1832. 

                                                                 Friendship Hill

Subsequent owners did three more additions, so the place looks like a patchwork quilt more than a well-designed house.  But I thought that’s what made it so cool.  There is so much history in this place, not only Gallatin’s but also of the house itself.  When the National Park Service bought it in 1979, it was pretty run-down and they invested $10 million in building restoration, with additional funds to develop the grounds, which include about 10 miles of trail.  The visitor center has a couple videos that help orient you to both Gallatin’s life and the house.  We spent a several hours exploring the house, hiking the grounds and chatting with the very knowledgeable rangers about this amazing little gem in the Pennsylvania countryside.

About 30 minutes away from Friendship Hill sits Fort Necessity, whose story is also connected to the National Road, but way before Gallatin pushed the idea before Congress.

In 1754, Lt. Col. George Washington, age 22, and a small band of Virginians were sent westward to scout out a road from what is now Cumberland MD to the Ohio River Valley and to support a small British fort built where Pittsburgh stands today.  The fort was built to challenge the French, who also were laying claim to this same territory.  But the French overran this small fort before Washington got there and built a larger one of their own.

                                                     Fort Necessity, inside looking out

So tensions were high when Washington arrived in the region. While scouting out the road, Washington learned of a French encampment near a “Great Meadows” where Washington and his command were camped.  Washington attacked the French, killing their commander.  Fearing reprisals from the French, Washington went back to the great meadows and built a small stockade he called Fort Necessity.  The French attacked Fort Necessity on July 3, 1754. The battle did not go well for Washington and the French accepted Washington’s surrender the next day.  It was the only time in his career that Washington surrendered.  This little skirmish was the first action in both the French and Indian War and the much larger, worldwide Seven Years’ War between France and England.

                                                             Craig at Fort Necessity

The Park Service has re-created the fort so you can walk around the circular stockade and marvel at its small size and see, first hand, how close the enemy was able to approach the fort from the surrounding forest.  It turns out building a fort in the middle of a marshy meadow closely surrounded by forest is not the best defensive strategy.  It is easy to see why the French won.  Attacking Fort Necessity was like shooting fish in a barrel.  The visitor center tells not only the story of Fort Necessity and the French and Indian War, but it also tells the story of the National Road, the same road scouted by Washington and pushed by Secretary Gallatin.  This Visitor Center is one of the best I’ve seen and is not to be missed.

                                                       The author with Albert Gallatin

We found the hiking at Fort Necessity to be really worthwhile, despite the cold weather and remnants of snow on the ground.  Several loop trails lead away from and back to the stockade, winding through the same forest where the French based their attack. And afterwards you can head back down Highway 40, the road Washington pioneered and Gallatin championed, to Uniontown for a cold beer and a chance to reflect on how a summer house and a small fort are remembered and experienced today as two small pieces of the much larger puzzle of our country’s history.

Tuzigoot and Montezuma’s Castle: Ancient cultures in a fertile Arizona river valley

Verde River Valley serves up two great cultural sites, Mark Twain, and some great huevos rancheros.

 Montezuma's Castle

In the center of Arizona lies the fertile Verde River valley, one of the longest free flowing rivers left in the state.  The Verde River Valley has long supported human habitation and the remnants of these ancient cultures are protected and preserved at Tuzigoot and Montezuma’s Castle national monuments.  I was recently there to learn about these early residents and score a couple more stamps in my NPS Passport. 

The original inhabitants were hunters and gatherers who thrived in the rich environment supported by the year-around river.  The first permanent structures in the valley appeared between 700 and 900 CE (Common Era).  The Southern Sinagua people started building the region’s large pueblos in about 1000 CE and it is the remnants of one of those hilltop pueblos that drew us to Cottonwood, Arizona just three short miles away from Tuzigoot.  Tuzigoot is the largest and best preserved of these Sinagua Pueblo structures in the whole of the Verde Valley. 

Verde River Valley from Tuzigoot

I was traveling with my sister Sandy and my girlfriend Craig and after a good night’s rest at the Cottonwood Hotel in Cottonwood’s historic district, we found ourselves birding in the Verde River Greenway State Natural Area, a 6 mile stretch of especially rich riparian habitat set aside between the towns of Clarkdale and Cottonwood by Arizona State Parks and easily accessed on the short drive to Tuzigoot.   It is easy to imagine the entirety of the river supporting this rich habitat and this habitat, along with the agriculture made possible by the river, supporting a large indigenous population.

Interestingly enough, it was not the river’s agricultural potential that drew large numbers of non-native peoples to the region.  It was copper.  The population in the valley took a big jump in the early 1900s with the growth of copper mining and smelting.  Cottonwood grew from the copper boom, but it was not a company town, unlike neighboring Clarkdale and Jerome, and that independent vibe still exists today.

When the first round of mine closures hit in the 1930s, it was University of Arizona archaeologists’ desire to protect and preserve Tuzigoot that provided employment for out-of-work miners and other area residents.  The Civil Works Administration and later the Works Project Administration, working closely with the University Of Arizona, excavated the site using this local labor.  The site was originally owned by Phelps Dodge Corporation, but they sold it to Yavapai County for $1 so the excavation work could be done under federal work project programs.  President Franklin Roosevelt designated Tuzigoot as a National Monument in 1939. 

View of visitor center from top of Tuzigoot

The workers in the 1930’s developed what is now a well-worn path from the charmingly rustic visitor center through the pueblo ruins to the top of the hill 120 feet above the floodplain where you have a wonderful 360 degree view of the Verde River Valley.  The ruins are mainly waist-high walls of rock showing you the 100 or so rooms that have been reclaimed and the trail is well interpreted, giving visitors an idea of what the rooms were used for.  The visitor center not only has some huge water pots recovered during the archeological excavations, but it tells the story of the archeological work done in the 1930s under the WPA.  Most of the pots are reconstructed from hundreds of pot shards painstakingly fit together like a jig saw puzzle by WPA workers 80 years ago.  I marveled at the patience it must have taken to sort through piles of pottery chips to rebuild these pots.  Just north of the visitor center a trail leads you to overlook a wetland that is a focus of the twice monthly birding walks (second and fourth Saturdays) offered by park staff during the winter. 

It doesn’t take long to visit Tuzigoot  and after a filling breakfast of huevos rancheros back in Cottonwood at the Red Rooster Café, and a walk down main street to check out its diversity of shops and wine tasting rooms we were on our way to Montezuma’s Castle, about a half hour away.  Located just off Interstate 17 about 50 miles south of Flagstaff, Montezuma’s Castle was a bustling site with a full parking lot of visitors on hand to see the Sinagua Pueblo built into the side of the limestone cliff.  Too bad I hadn’t been able to visit in the 1960s when you could still climb the ladders into the pueblo and explore it first-hand.   You are now limited to a view from the trail.  A small scale-model built by the park service gives you an idea of what it must have been like with people living there.  The Castle is about 20 rooms and is estimated to have housed about 35 people.  There is observable evidence of additional housing built into the cliff, making this one of about 40 large villages identified throughout the valley.  President Teddy Roosevelt created the monument in 1906 in one of the earliest uses of the Antiquities Act.

But the really cool site at Montezuma’s Castle is not the Castle, it is Montezuma’s Well, a short 11 mile drive to the north.  The well is a naturally occurring sinkhole in the earth filled with 15 million gallons of water.  Local Native American people consider this a sacred site and a place of origin.  Think of the well as a limestone bowl 130 yards across and filled about halfway.  You stand on the rim of the bowl and look down into the small lake that is the well.  I have seen other limestone sinkholes, but one filled with so much water is not a sight one expects in the desert.  From the parking lot it is about 1/3 mile up to and around most of the well. 

As we peeked over the rim for the first time, we were greeted not only by this huge body of water, but also by ducks – buffleheads, northern shovelers and American widgeons.  We wondered what they ate besides the vegetation that grew along the water’s edge.  Are there any fish in the well?  Fortunately there was no shortage of interpretive signs and we quickly learned that with a carbon dioxide level 80 times greater than most lakes there are no fish.  But there is a unique ecosystem that includes small shrimp-like amphipods, a specialized species of snail and thousands of leeches, all food for birds.

For those a bit more adventuresome, there is a short trail down to the water’s edge and I didn’t hesitate to scramble down to check out the lake at water level.  There are two springs at the bottom of the well that provide about 1.6 million gallons of water daily, even in times of drought.  So about 10% of the water turns over each day.  The trail leads to an outlet that flows 150 feet through the travertine limestone wall and into Wet Beaver Creek on the outside of the well.

Trail leading to the bottom of Montezuma's Well

There are cliff dwellings inside the well including several built into caves near the outlet.  Jerry, a very nice park volunteer, told me about the graffiti in these caves – not ancient paintings, but more recent scrawlings including an advertisement for George Rothrock Photography dated 1878.  It seems that for a short time George claimed “ownership” of the well and charged people to take their photos along the edge of the lake.

Exploration of these caves is not permitted for obvious reasons.  They are small, narrow and could easily be destroyed by too many well-meaning visitors.  But Jerry told me that locals who had explored the cave before they were closed off reported that Samuel Clements (Mark Twain) visited the site and wrote his name inside the cave, alongside notations from other 19^th century visitors.  I liked that I was standing where Mark Twain might have once stood.

Rothrock Photography graffiti

Back up on the rim, the trail takes you down the outside of the well to where the outlet hits Wet Beaver Creek.  And there we discovered remnants of a 7 mile canal that linked the well and its perpetual water supply with the agriculture fields near Montezuma’s Castle.  Seems the canal wasn’t needed every year, only when the rains didn’t come.  But in those times of drought, these Verde River Valley residents had a steady supply of water to feed their crops of cotton, squash, beans and agave.  The Park Service is currently restoring the canal.

We’d been told by several people we met in Cottonwood that the Wells were not to be missed.  How right they were.  This is a hidden gem in the desert and now one of our favorite places.

Fort Bowie National Historic Site: Apache Pass location tells many stories

This hike-in only park is a great hands-on opportunity to experience 19^th Century Army life in the Arizona Desert

 View of Fort Bowie from the Overlook Ridge Trail

 In the far eastern reaches of Arizona, nestled in the pass between the Chiricahua and Dos Cabezas mountains, 20 miles or so from its border with New Mexico, sits the well preserved remains of Fort Bowie, established as a National Historic Site in 1972.  Apache Pass, and its year around water supply, hosted Fort Bowie from 1861 to 1894 and was a key site in the decades-long battle against the Apache. 

 

I like to hike, so was particularly thrilled to learn that Fort Bowie is a hike-in only park, the first and possibly the only hike-in park in the system (the Park Ranger wasn’t certain about its exclusivity).  Unless you have a handicapped sticker on your car, you simply cannot drive there.  It is a perfect place to get some exercise and learn a bit about how the U.S. Army treated the local Apache 150 years ago.

It took a couple of hours to drive from Tucson, dropping south off Interstate 10 at Willcox for a 28 mile drive on highway 186 to the turn off onto Apache Pass Road for the eight mile drive to the trailhead.  This last eight miles is a dirt road and it’s in pretty good shape.  There were a couple RVs parked at the trailhead along with cars and trucks from nine different states.  This visitor diversity is a great reminder that hanging out in Arizona in January is a great escape from colder northern climates and that the national parks are widely appreciated.

The trailhead hosts several covered picnic tables (and an outhouse), so with our Montana friends Bruce and Bonnie, my girlfriend Craig and I fueled up on cheese, crackers, carrots and chocolate for our 1.5 mile hike through the desert grassland and mesquite to the Fort.  The hike is a moderate one with some elevation gain heading into Apache Pass and the fort site.  Along the trail, the park service has done a good job of interpreting a series of skirmishes and battles between the Army and Apache and it tells the story of why Fort Bowie is located where it is.  With year-around water near the fort, the birding on the hike in was pretty good as well.

One of the sites along the trail is the old Butterfield Stage Station that was active in Apache Pass from 1858 to 1861.  Butterfield had the contract to deliver mail from Memphis and St. Louis to California and the presence of water made this a logical spot for a stage station.  The Civil War ended Butterfield’s mail delivery contract, but remnants of the station are still there for you to see.  It took 24 days for the mail to get to California which, at the time, was lightning fast compared to shipping it around the tip of South America.

                                             All that's left of the Butterfield Stage Station

1861 was also the year of the Pass’s first battle between local Apaches and the Army.  It started with a misunderstanding about who had abducted a young boy from a neighboring ranch during an Indian raid.  The Army was certain that is was the Chiricahua Apaches, led by Cochise.  A column of soldiers led by Lt. George Bascom was sent to capture Cochise and secure the boy's return.  But Cochise had nothing to do with the whole affair. Bascom didn’t believe him and the resulting 16 days of fighting, known today as the Bascom Affair, was the first real conflict between local Apaches and the Army in this region.  

There was another battle in Apache Pass in 1862, only this one was between Union Army volunteers from California and the Chiricahua Apache.  Sent to the region to fight confederate soldiers who had their eyes on the California gold fields, the Californians were attacked by the Apaches.  This battle, known as the Battle of Apache Pass, led to the army establishing Fort Bowie, named after California regiment commander George Bowie, not Jim Bowie of big knife fame.  The first fort was a series of tents and primitive huts and that site can be visited on a short trail from the current fort location.  Construction of the second fort, and the one you can visit today, began in 1868 and grew into one of the most important outposts for fighting Apaches in the Southwest.  Conflicts with Cochise went on for 10 years until peace was made in 1872 and the Apache were given a reservation on their traditional homeland.  

Cochise’s Chiricahua Reservation was only in existence until 1876, when it was closed and the Chiricahua Apache were moved to another reservation in the Gila River Valley.  Only Geronimo and his followers didn’t like that idea and this precipitated a second round of fighting between the Apache and the U.S. Army.  Conflicts with Geronimo lasted 10 years until he was captured in 1886.  As armed conflicts with the local Apache were no longer a concern, the fort was closed in 1894.

 The trail goes by several key battle locations for both the Bascom Affair and the Battle for Apache Pass and the Park Service does a good job of telling the local stories.  There is also a graveyard by the trail that includes the grave of Little Robe, Geronimo’s two-year old son.  There is a guide that tells a story for each of the 23 gravesites.  Be sure and take some time to read some of these stories, including the one about O.O. Spence and how he won his Medal of Honor in a battle with Cochise in October 1869.

The hike ends at the fort site.  No complete buildings remain, but walls for most of the 38 structures standing when the fort closed have been preserved and this gives you a good sense of how the fort was laid out.  Each building is well interpreted along the pathway that winds through the fort site.  I was not expecting to see photos of the officer’s quarters, which graphically illustrated that being an officer was WAY more comfortable than being an enlisted man.  These homes looked like they could have been in any large city in America, not out in the middle of the Arizona desert.

 Author hanging out at the Barracks

There is a small visitor center and museum that tells the story of what it was like to live here and you can get a stamp for your national parks passport.  And it was there that I met Junior Ranger Mitch, a sixth grader traveling with his parents to “explore all the national parks.”  If only my parents had been cool enough to take me on a yearlong trip across the country to visit all the parks!  Mitch’s parents decided that national parks would make the best classroom for their son and he was being home schooled through the national park system.  His vest was covered with over 60 Junior Ranger badges!

After our chat with Mitch and his parents and good tour through the fort site, we headed back to the parking lot by way of the Overlook Ridge trail above the visitor center.  Don’t miss this trail as you get great views of the fort site and the surrounding landscape which helped me understand the strategic importance of this piece of real estate and better appreciate why the Army chose to build a fort here.