Picture the tip of the Golden Triangle, where the Allegheny River and the Monongahela River meet to form the Ohio. This is one of the most strategically important pieces of real estate in American history. The French understood it immediately.
In 1754, they built Fort Duquesne here to control river traffic and block British expansion westward. The young George Washington had scouted this exact spot the year before and recommended it for a British fort. Instead, the French got here first.
For four years this point was the epicenter of the French and Indian War. In November 1758 the British finally arrived in force, and the French blew up their own fort and retreated rather than surrender. The British built Fort Pitt, the largest fort in North America, on this ground.
The fountain shooting sixty feet into the air marks where the rivers join. Point State Park was created in 1974 on land that had been industrial rail yards. Stand at the very tip of the triangle and look west: that is the Ohio River beginning its 981-mile journey to the Mississippi, the same water highway that carried settlers west into the continent for a century.