History of Pittsburgh

The history of Pittsburgh began with centuries of Native American civilization in the modern Pittsburgh region, known as Jaödeogë’ in the Seneca language. Eventually, European explorers encountered the strategic confluence where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers meet to form the Ohio, which leads to the Mississippi River. The area became a battleground when France and Great Britain fought for control in the 1750s. When the British were victorious, the French ceded control of territories east of the Mississippi.

Following American independence in 1783, the village around Fort Pitt continued to grow. The region saw the short-lived Whiskey Rebellion, when farmers rebelled against federal taxes on whiskey. The War of 1812 cut off the supply of British goods, stimulating American manufacture. By 1815, Pittsburgh was producing large quantities of iron, brass, tin, and glass products. By the 1840s, Pittsburgh had grown to be one of the largest cities west of the Allegheny Mountains. Production of steel began in 1875. During the 1877 railway riots it was the site of the most violence and damage in any city affected by the nationwide strikes of that summer. Workers protested against cuts in wages, burning down buildings at the railyards, including 100 train engines and more than 1,000 cars. Forty men were killed, most of them strikers. By 1911, Pittsburgh was producing half the nation's steel.

Pittsburgh was a Republican party stronghold until 1932. The soaring unemployment of the Great Depression, the New Deal relief programs and the rise of powerful labor unions in the 1930s turned the city into a liberal stronghold of the New Deal Coalition under powerful Democratic mayors. In World War II, it was the center of the "Arsenal of Democracy", producing munitions for the Allied war effort as prosperity returned.

Following World War II, Pittsburgh launched a clean air and civic revitalization project known as the "Renaissance". The industrial base continued to expand through the 1960s, but after 1970 foreign competition led to the collapse of the steel industry, with massive layoffs and mill closures. Top corporate headquarters moved out in the 1980s. In 2007 the city lost its status as a major transportation hub. The population of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area is holding steady at 2.4 million; 65% of its residents are of European descent and 35% are minorities.

For thousands of years, Native Americans inhabited the region where the Allegheny and the Monongahela join to form the Ohio. Paleo-Indians conducted a hunter-gatherer lifestyle in the region perhaps as early as 19,000 years ago. Meadowcroft Rockshelter, an archaeological site west of Pittsburgh, provides evidence that these first Americans lived in the region from that date. During the Adena culture that followed, Mound Builders erected a large Indian Mound at the future site of McKees Rocks, about three miles (5 km) from the head of the Ohio. The Indian Mound, a burial site, was augmented in later years by members of the Hopewell culture.

By 1700 the Haudenosaunee, the Five Nations-based south of the Great Lakes in present-day New York, held dominion over the upper Ohio valley, reserving it for hunting grounds. Other tribes included the Lenape, who had been displaced from eastern Pennsylvania by European settlement, and the Shawnee, who had migrated up from the south. With the arrival of European explorers, these tribes and others had been devastated by infectious diseases from Europe, such as smallpox, measles, influenza, and malaria, to which they had no immunity.

In 1748, when Conrad Weiser visited Logstown, 18 miles (29 km) downriver from Pittsburgh, he counted 789 warriors gathered: the Iroquois included 163 Seneca, 74 Mohawk, 35 Onondaga, 20 Cayuga, and 15 Oneida. Other tribes were 165 Lenape, 162 Shawnee, 100 Wyandot, 40 Tisagechroami, and 15 Mohican.

Shannopin's Town, a Lenape (Delaware) village on the east bank of the Allegheny, was established in the 1720s and was deserted after 1758. The village is believed to have been roughly from where Penn Avenue is today, below the mouth of Two Mile Run, from 30th Street to 39th Street. According to George Croghan, the town was situated on the south bank of the Allegheny, nearly opposite what is now known as Herr's Island, in what is now the Lawrenceville neighborhood in the city of Pittsburgh.