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Survey of
Historic Sites and Buildings

	FORT NECESSITY NATIONAL BATTLEFIELD Pennsylvania	Fort Necessity NB
Location: 11 miles east of Uniontown on U.S. 40; address, Star Route, Box 15, Farmington, Pa. 15437. Fort Necessity National Battlefield Historical Handbook

At Fort Necessity, which consists of a rude circular palisade and cabin in the Great Meadows of western Pennsylvania, George Washington rose to prominence in the conflict that opened the French and Indian War. Lieutenant Colonel Washington marched westward with an army of Virginians in April 1754 to contest French possession of the Forks of the Ohio, strategic site of modern Pittsburgh, where the French had built Fort Duquesne. He and his small advance guard skirmished at Great Meadows on May 24 with a French scouting party from Fort Duquesne, and drove it from the field. Washington next built Fort Necessity as a temporary defensive work. Reinforcements swelled his command to 293 officers and men, but the French attacked him on July 3 with a force more than twice this number and by nightfall had clearly won the battle. The Virginians surrendered and were permitted next day to withdraw with the honors of war. They returned to Virginia.

A view of the Great Meadows and reconstructed Fort Necessity, from the southwest, the direction from which the French first approached the fort. (National Park Service)

Visitors now see at Fort Necessity a stockade, storehouse, and entrenchments, faithfully reconstructed in 1954 on the exact site of the original structures. Most of Great Meadows is included in the surrounding Federal area. In the vicinity are the site of the skirmish between Washington and the French scouting party and the grave of Gen. Edward Braddock, killed in a famous battle with the French and Indians in 1755.