Albert Gallatin' house at Friendship Hill/Jim Stratton

In the southwest corner of Pennsylvania, just about an hour shy of the Ohio state line, sit a couple of National Park System units that might 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 and 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 what was happening in this part of America back in the late 18th/early 19th centuries.

My girlfriend Craig and I had spent most of the week grooving on the Revolutionary War sites in Philadelphia; sites like the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and Thaddeus Kosciuszko’s home, and other interesting sites such as 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, Pennsylvania, where we found food and lodging located centrally to both sites. Our favorite spot was recommended by a local park ranger, 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 and 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 and 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 and Clark, are the Madison and the Jefferson.

Albert Gallatin's desk at Friendship Hill/Jim Stratton

Gallatin was Swiss-born and immigrated to the United States 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.

Gallatin's 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.

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 and 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, Maryland, to the Ohio River Valley was ultimately started in 1811. 

The first permanent structure built on this bluff above the Monongahela River that runs out of West Virginia into Pennsylvania not far from Uniontown and 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 be delivered. For the full story, you’ll have to visit in person!  Gallatin sold the property in 1832. 

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 the agency 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.

Looking out of Fort Necessity/Jim Stratton

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, Maryland, 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.

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 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 his 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.

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.

Jim Stratton with Albert Gallatin statue at Friendship Hill/Courtesy

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.

Jim 'Stratto' Stratton recently retired from a 35-year career working to protect public lands in Alaska and the West. In retirement, his business card reads "Public Lands & Wildlife Enthusiast." He started his Alaska conservation career in 1981 as the executive director of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, and then spent 11 years as the program and finance director for the Alaska Conservation Foundation. He took a turn working for state government for eight years as the director of the Division of Parks and Outdoor Recreation for the Alaska Department of Natural Resources. Stratto finished his career in 2015 as the Deputy Vice President for Regional Operations for the National Parks Conservation Association after running NPCA's Alaska Regional Office for a decade.