I took a baseball-inspired road trip in June 2024 to Cleveland, Toronto and Pittsburgh. My Pittsburgh History Lesson, Part 1 focused on the role of Fort Pitt in the 18th Century founding of Pittsburgh. This post focuses on what I learned about Pittsburgh’s history after 1800.
The Heinz History Center has six floors spread over at three buildings (I think…it was a little confusing). One of those floors focused on the French and Indian War which gave helpful context to the material I saw at the Fort Pitt Museum. The rest of the museum covered a surprising breadth of Pittsburgh history since the founding of the city. I spent about six hours at the museum over two days. I promise this post will not be as extensive as Part 1.
Lewis & Clark Expedition
I did not realize that Pittsburgh was the starting point for the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
When it became clear that it was losing the French and Indian War in 1762, France inked the secret Treaty of Fontainebleau ceding the Louisiana Territory to Spain rather than see it go to England. The Treaty of Paris closing the Seven Years’ War in 1763 made it more official, with England receiving territories east of the Mississippi and Spain getting the lands west of the river. The territory remained nominally Spanish for the rest of the century but Spain did little to consolidate control beyond New Orleans. In the meantime, little things like the American Revolution, French Revolution, Haitian Revolution and rise of Napoleon reordered the world.
In 1800, based on success in the Italian Campaigns and a brief interval of peace in Europe, Napoleon turned his attention to rebuilding France’s empire in the Americas. He signed the secret Third Treaty of San Ildefonso in which Spain ceded control of Louisiana back to France. In December 1801 Napoleon sent nearly 30,000 French soldiers in the Saint Domingue expedition to reassert French control of Haiti. However, this overwhelming force met with disease and defeats. By early 1803, faced with rising tensions in Europe with England, expensive losses in Haiti, few resources to exploit Louisiana (nor income to expect from the colony), frustrated by Spain’s unwillingness to cede Florida, and with back channel offers from Jefferson’s envoys (first to buy the port of New Orleans and eventually the whole Louisiana Territory), Napoleon decided to cut his losses in the Americas and sell Louisiana to the United States.
Even before the Louisiana Purchase was announced in July 1803, Congress approved Thomas Jefferson’s secret request for an expedition to explore the largely unknown expanse from the Mississippi to the Pacific. Jefferson tapped his personal secretary, Meriweather Lewis, to lead the expedition. Lewis had been a neighbor of Jefferson’s growing up and became a Captain in the U.S. Army with frontier experience during the Whiskey Rebellion. Lewis and Jefferson chose Pittsburgh, then America’s “Gateway to the West”, as the initial base to build the keelboat for the expedition, supply the mission and recruit some of the crew. Lewis chose his Army colleague William Clark to co-captain the expedition; Clark very nearly missed the journey, joining the mission near Louisville, Kentucky as they sailed by in October.
Jefferson’s letter of credit to Lewis is a poignant reminder of just how risky this expedition was, nearly the equivalent of a moon shot two centuries later. The general plan was that if they were so fortunate as to get to the Pacific Coast, they could call on the good graces of any ship captain they might encounter for a lift back home. Good luck with all that.
I like this map of North America from 1802, showing emphatically just how little was known of the western half of North America. The cartographer had a decent approximation of the continental coastline and lands east of the Mississippi, a sketchy understanding of Spanish territories but the land west of the Mississippi was mostly blank. Clark’s map of their journey, completed in February 1806 becomes even more impressive in light of how little was known before they started.
Pittsburgh may not have played much of a role in the Lewis and Clark Expedition beyond the initial send off, but I have a better appreciation of the expedition thanks to this exhibit and I like that for a short time Pittsburgh really was the Gateway to the West.
From Slavery to Freedom
There was an exhibit with a better-than-expected condensed history of slavery in the Americas, Pittsburgh’s role as stop on the Underground Railroad and in the abolition movement. The statistic cited below by historian Howard Dodson about the demographics of immigrants to the Americas between 1492 and 1776 is chilling and well worth remembering.
Pittsburgh as Transportation, Manufacturing and Technology Hub
A great deal of the museum celebrated Pittsburgh’s substantial role as a hub of transportation, manufacturing, mining, glass making, steel, finance, electricity and, of course, Heinz condiment making from the 19th century onward. I didn’t try to take photos or note everything, but there were interesting displays and exhibits on institutions and individuals including Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Mellon, Henry Frick, George Westinghouse, Henry J. Heinz, Jonas Salk and many others. These exhibits scratched the surface of a variety of topics that merit further research if I had endless time. As a silly example, in the case of Heinz, 57 varieties of what? It seems that the number 57 took on mystical marketing appeal for Henry Heinz and that’s why they still feature it on ketchup bottles.
I was pleased to find a display featuring the Girls of Steel FIRST robotics team, based in Pittsburgh.
Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum
The Heinz Center also housed the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum covering several floors in an adjacent building. I will spare you the many photos I could have taken of various displays on legends from baseball, football, basketball, hockey, golf and more. There was a good section on the two Negro Baseball League teams based in Pittsburgh, the Homestead Grays and the Pittsburgh Crawfords. I’ve always been fascinated by baseball parks and their dimensions so the one photo I took compared the four Pittsburgh parks over more than a century.
There were other exhibits in the Heinz Center, including a section on important women of the region, different ethnic groups that made their homes in the region, and a kind of open-shelf display of items that would otherwise be in storage. I was pleasantly surprised and ultimately overwhelmed by the breadth of material presented at the Heinz History Center. I left with a much better appreciation and respect for the role Pittsburgh and environs have played in the development of American history and culture. Kudos to Pittsburghers and the museum.
The amount of time I spent at the museum cut into loose plans I had to see some other Pittsburgh sights, including riding the two inclines on the bluffs south of the Monongahela which offer good views of the city, a visit to the Botanical Garden which is reputed to be quite lovely, and potential dim sum in Chinatown. Laurie later reminded me of the Stephen Foster Museum which also would have been of interest to me — I forgot about it completely. There is more to see and learn in Pittsburgh if I ever get back.
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