Steel City of 446 bridges at three rivers' meeting
Pittsburgh, Allegheny County's seat in southwestern Pennsylvania, sits where the Allegheny and Monongahela form the Ohio. Nicknamed Steel City for U.S. steel history and City of Bridges for 446 spans, it was named in 1758 by Scotsman John Forbes for William Pitt.
Shawnee and other peoples long lived around the Ohio's headwaters, the Seneca called the confluence Diondega, and the Lenape town of Shannopin stood along today's Penn Avenue. La Salle was the first known European here, in 1669. French troops came south from Quebec in 1749 to link Canada with Louisiana, drove the British from their half-built Fort Prince George in 1754, and raised Fort Duquesne. After the British took the forks, General John Forbes named the settlement in 1758 for William Pitt, probably pronouncing it like Edinburgh. Native forces besieged Fort Pitt during Pontiac's War in 1763 until Henry Bouquet won at Bushy Run.
The Penns bought the region from the Iroquois under the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, and Pitt Township formed in 1771. Boatbuilding for Ohio settlers was an early trade; Thomas Vickroy drew a town plan in 1784, the Gazette started in 1786, and the borough was chartered on 22 April 1794. Meriwether Lewis bought his keelboat here in 1803. The War of 1812 cut off British imports, and by 1815 local works were turning out iron, brass, tin and glass; city status followed in 1816. Welsh steelworkers arrived in the 1830s, and a great fire destroyed over a thousand buildings in 1845. Underground Railroad stations aided freedom seekers, though many fled to Canada after the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act.
Civil War demand boosted the ironworks, and in 1875 Andrew Carnegie opened the Edgar Thomson works using the Bessemer process. J. P. Morgan and Elbert Gary folded Carnegie Steel into U.S. Steel in 1901, and by 1910 the city was the country's eighth largest and made a third to a half of its steel. Czech and Slovak emigres signed the Pittsburgh Agreement on 31 May 1918, and a March 1936 flood crested at 46 feet, killing at least 62. Mills ran around the clock in the Second World War, producing 95 million tons of steel and record smog.
The federal government spelled it Pittsburg from 1891 to 1911. The 2020 census counted 302,971 residents, and 446 bridges and 68 colleges, including Carnegie Mellon, mark the modern city.
Source: Pittsburgh
