Fort Necessity - 7/4/2016

This morning we said goodbye to my brother Gary and his family and headed west toward Dayton, OH.  It is farther then we want to go in one day so we will be stopping in western Pennsylvania near the city of Washington, PA.  However since this is a relatively short driving day we made two stops on the way.  The first was at a Walmart in Cumberland, MD, to grab some lunch and to restock our groceries.  The weather was overcast but no rain until we got to near Cumberland and then we ran into rain and a very low cloud deck that when we were going over the higher hills we had to drive through. Here is a photo of us having lunch in the Walmart parking lot.  You can see how low the clouds were.

Our second stop was at Fort Necessity National Battlefield in Pennsylvania.  Fort Necessity was built in 1754 by a unit of the Virginia Militia led by Lt. Col. George Washington.  The battle at the fort was  one of the first battles of the French and Indian War.

Washington had been ordered to this area to build a road to the Monongahela River and to force the French to leave the area.  Washington had been in this area in 1753 on a diplomatic mission to order the French out of the area.  He was ignored, so in 1754 he returned with 295 Virginia Militia and 100 regular British troops.  He initially met a small contingent of the French at Jumonville Glen where he was able to surprise and defeat them.  He then returned to a meadow that he had earlier selected as his base of operations and had his men build what is now known as Fort Necessity.  It was basically a crude palisade to protect a hut that contained supplies.

When word of the events of Jumonville Glen reached the French, they dispatched a much larger force led by Louis Coulon de Villiers.  They attacked Washington's forces on July 3, 1754 in a battle that lasted most of the day.  Washington had expected a frontal assault but that was not what the French and Indians did.  They surrounded the fort and remained in the treeline while Washington's forces quickly built earthen breast works.  Unfortunately, Washington's forces made a nice concentrated target while the French and Indians were spread out in the trees and were much harder to target.  So needless to say, Washington's forces got the worse of it and by the end of the day Washington realized it was hopeless and surrendered.

Here is a photo of the reconstructed fort.  Neat but not very impressive.

Here is Pat standing in front of the supply shed at the center of the fort.  It was raining.

Here you see the breast works that the Virginia militia built and an example of one of the small pivot guns that they had brought with them.  You can also see the extensive tree line that the French and Indians took advantage of.

After leaving Fort Necessity we drove for another 1-1/2 hours and stopped at a campground a few mile before Washington, PA.  Nice campground with an enormous pool that we didn't get a chance to use.  Our pad was just on the edge of a bluff over looking a pond.  I doubled checked my brakes.  Here we are.

And here is the pond.

Tomorrow we have a slightly longer drive to Dayton.  If things go according to plan, we will be in the FamCamp on Wright-Patterson AFB.