Beaver County History + Heritage

The Beaver Area Heritage Museum is known as one of the best local history museums in America. It is housed in a 100-year-old railroad freight station and includes a permanent collection of more than 5,000 rare artifacts from the area.

Less than a half mile away is the former site of Fort McIntosh, which was built in 1778 on a commanding plateau above the Ohio River. It served as the headquarters of the largest army to serve west of the Alleghenies to protect the western frontier from possible attacks from the British and from raids by their Native American allies.

In 1785, the fort was the scene of the signing of the historic Treaty of Fort McIntosh by chiefs of the Delaware, Wyandot, Ottawa and Chippewa nations, along with treaty commissioners George Rogers Clark, Richard Butler and Arthur Lee. As a direct result of this treaty, Congress enacted the Land Ordinance of 1785, ultimately opening all western territories to boundary surveys and orderly settlement, and marking the beginning of the westward migration that continued for 100 years. Today, the restoration of the Fort McIntosh site includes picturesque landscaping, granite monuments and bronze plaques as well as the original stone footers of the walls and fireplaces.