A new exhibition exploring Western Pennsylvania’s role in the Revolutionary War was unveiled Sunday at the Fort Pitt Museum.
The museum, part of the Senator John Heinz History Center’s family of museums, had been closed since the start of the year as the new display was prepared.
“Pittsburgh’s Revolution” uses imagery and artifacts to showcase the role the region played during the nation’s fight for independence and the area’s impact on the founding of America.
“Located at the headwaters of the Ohio River, Fort Pitt was the epicenter of the Revolutionary War in the West,” a description of the exhibition on the museum’s website says. “From this frontier stronghold, American leaders defended the Ohio Country, negotiated with Native nations — including the Delaware, Shawnee and Six Nations, or Iroquois, Confederacy — and ultimately waged a war that reshaped the region forever.”
Among the rarest objects featured in the exhibition is the original Westmoreland Battalion Flag, created for Col. John Proctor’s 1st Battalion of Westmoreland County in 1775. Predating the Stars and Stripes, the flag features a rattlesnake and the motto “Don’t tread on me.”
Other highlights include: a letter authored by Patrick Henry, a Founding Father from Virginia, in which he discusses the importance of defending Fort Pitt “to the last extremity”; a rare Spanish musket; a trunk and tea canister used to secretly transport money to pay American soldiers at the fort; archaeological discoveries from Hanna’s Town, the first seat of government in Westmoreland County, in Hempfield; and a sword and pistols that belonged to Gen. William Irvine, who commanded Fort Pitt from 1781 to 1783.
The display arrives ahead of the country’s 250th anniversary in July.
Point State Park, the 36-acre green space in which the Fort Pitt Museum is situated, in a reconstructed bastion of the British fort that once sat at the confluence of the city’s three rivers. It is expected to see major crowds for both the U.S. Semiquincentennial and the 2026 NFL Draft April 23-25.