Appendix H - Historical Archaeological and ... - CBP.gov

Olmsted. In addition to building the consensus for the park, he and his associate Calvert Vaux
were commissioned to prepare the layout and planting plan for the reservation (Hall, 1995:179-
185; Williams, 1972:16-17).
The Adirondack Forest Preserve was created in 1885, and the Adirondack Park was established
in 1892 and contains six million acres of both State-owned and private land. The Forest Preserve
was made “forever wild” in 1895. In the twenty-first century, the Forest Preserve covers
approximately 2.5 million acres (Adirondack Park Agency, 2003; Haynes, 2001).
1.2.2.2 Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Contact Period/Exploration/Colonial Period
While Dutch and Swedish traders explored and settled portions of eastern Pennsylvania as early
as the 1620s, Catholic missionaries and French explorers would not enter the valleys and
waterways of western Pennsylvania until the 1660s. As the fur trade became more established
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the European powers erected fortified trading
posts in the frontier. However, it would not be until the eighteenth century that the inland areas
of western Pennsylvania saw fortifications. By the 1700s, Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) incursions
into the area pushed local Delaware and Shawnee populations as far west as what is now Illinois.
As a result, northwestern Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio became a sparsely settled
hinterland of the Seneca, subject to hunting and resource procurement (Hunter, 1978:590).
By 1669, the French portaged from Lake Erie to Chautauqua Lake (in western New York) and
then via waterways through western Pennsylvania to the Mississippi River. This route was
traversed in 1739 by forces under the command of Charles Le Moyne de Longueuil as part of an
indecisive effort to reinforce French forces in what is now northern Mississippi (Stevens and
Kent, 2000 [1941]; Figure H-7). A similar route was followed by a French expedition under the
direction of Captain Pierre-Joseph Céloron de Blainville in 1749 in the run-up to the French and
Indian War. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the French had created a string of military
and trading installations extending from Fort Niagara at Lake Ontario along the southern shore of
Lake Erie to Presqu’isle (present-day Erie, Pennsylvania) into the Ohio valley (see Figure H-7).
In the late 1740s, both French traders and British settlers had expanded their activities west of
the Appalachian Mountains to engage native nations in the Ohio Country. As a result, each
kingdom intensified their efforts to deny the other access to the area (Abler and Tooker,
1978:506-507; Tooker, 1978:431-432; Smith 2008).
Great Britain and France engaged in another round of their incessant colonial war in the 1750s.
While much of the action of the conflict occurred elsewhere, what is now western Pennsylvania
saw the erection of several French fortifications, including Fort de la Presqu’isle (1753); Fort de
la Riviere au Boeuf (Fort Le Boeuf) on French Creek (1753, near Waterford); and Fort Machault
at the confluence of French Creek and the Allegheny River (1753-1757, present-day Franklin)
(see Figure H-7). An important supply route extended from Presqu’isle to the junction of the
Allegheny and Monongahela rivers which forms the Ohio River, where the French erected Fort
Duquesne (present-day Pittsburgh). The British would make extensive use of this route after the
construction of Fort Pitt. Later, the British would construct Fort Venago (1760) in proximity to
the former location of Fort Machault, which the French burned upon their evacuation of the area
Northern Border Activities H-86 July 2012