Pittsburgh has undergone a number of striking changes in identity throughout its history. The site was originally occupied by the Shawnee and Delaware peoples. In the late 18th century it served as the location for a frontier fort for both the British and the French. In 1753 George Washington surveyed the area for the Ohio Land Company of Virginia and described the land where the Allegheny and Monongahela converge as “extremely well situated for a fort, as it has the absolute command of both rivers.” The only Native American settlement in the area at that time was a small Shawnee village on the Allegheny. The British began building a fort, but before they could complete it the French captured the point and built Fort Duquesne. General John Forbes reestablished British control in 1758, renamed the site Pittsburgh, in honor of the British prime minister William Pitt the Elder, and built Fort Pitt, the largest structure the British constructed in North America. Although Native American uprisings delayed white settlement until the 1770s, by 1783 there were about 100 families living in Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh developed initially as a commercial city because of its location west of the Allegheny Mountains at the headwaters of the Ohio River, a major transportation route. In 1811 the first steamboat to ply the Mississippi River system was built in Pittsburgh, and the New Orleans steamed down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to its namesake city in Louisiana. The Pennsylvania Mainline Canal reached Pittsburgh in 1837 and the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1851. As the 19th century progressed, Pittsburgh became one of the nation's greatest industrial cities, and was a leading producer of glass, iron, and textiles. Cheap energy in the form of high-quality bituminous coal found nearby in a coal field called the Pittsburgh Seam played a major role in the city's rise.
