Bushy Run Battlefield

           My wife asked on the phone, "Where are you hiking today?"  I replied, "Bushy Run," and waited for some signal of recognition...but there was none.  She's an educated woman, but she probably hasn't heard of Bushy Run since 7th grade history class.  I never understand people who don't care about history, but when I do my weekly treks out into the Big World, my inner history buff often struggles with my inner treehugger.  One urges me to explore historic sites, and the other mainly wants wilderness.  Ironically enough, the treehugger usually kicks the history buff's ass.  But not today.  On this day, the history buff scored a rare victory and led me to Westmoreland County for a history trek instead of a nature hike...

           And yet, it turned out to be both.  There's enough nature here for most folks.  This is where the Battle of Bushy Run took place in August of 1763, more than a decade prior to the American Revolution.  It's exactly an hour from where I live...if traffic is light.  In the mid-1750s, the British had promised the Indians that they would cease westward expansion if the Indians supported them against the French.  But at the close of the French and Indian War, after the Indians had shed their blood in support of the British cause, settlers kept pouring over the Alleghenies, and British forts were not abandoned.  An Indian war, usually known as "Pontiac's Uprising," took place.  It was an attempt to push the whites back east of the mountains, and it began with attacks on the fort at Detroit, which stood strong.  Most smaller western forts were taken by bands of Ottawas and Hurons.  Soldiers and settlers were brutally tortured and murdered.  Here in more easterly places, the Shawnees and Delawares, who had recently fought alongside the English, now fought against them.  They sacked the forts at modern-day Waterford, Franklin, and Presque Isle.  In order to protect Fort Pitt--at Pittsburgh--General Henry Bouquet was sent west from Philadelphia with a small army.  He was ambushed by Indians on the crest of Edge Hill, seen here.  After two days of battle, he fought them off and continued to Pittsburgh.

            The problem with hiking at a place like Bushy Run Battlefield is that you might just show up to find school buses in the parking lot...which I did.  The lady at the visitors' center sent me away until the school group completed their tour.  She told me to come back after they left.  I hiked the woods and fields by myself and never did go back to the little museum.  I stayed away partly out of mean-spiritedness.  I've heard the employees at other historic sites--most notably the Fort Pitt history museum--talking fretfully about the number of visits they'd had on a given day.  Every warm body counts in the history business.  By not going back, I wanted to show them that they'd chased off a paying customer... (I admit that I can be kind of petty when I feel slighted.)

            It's a scenic place, crisscrossed by a labyrinth of trails through pleasant woods.  There are nice, rolling green hills and broad, grassy fields.  If the goal was to spend a crisp day in the autumnal countryside, a day of solitude and discovery, then it can be counted a great success.  If the goal was wilderness and sylvan grandeur, then I'm afraid it was a hardly achieved.

          This bottom photo shows the famous Forbes Road, one of the earliest ways through the wilderness of Western Pennsylvania.  The top photo is the site where Bouquet erected a small fort out of flour bags at the summit of Edge Hill.  As for the little log house, there was no sign of any kind to explain it, though it clearly isn't 250 years old.