Redstone Old Fort

The site is unlikely to be the same as an earlier fort the French document as Hangard dated to 1754 and which was confusedly, likely located on the nearby stream called Redstone Creek.

The fortress site was chosen to guard and command the crossing point[notes 2] of the formidable east–west obstacle of the Monongahela River along the route of an Indian trail from the Potomac River—along one of the few mountain passes allowing traffic between the Ohio Country and the eastern seaboard cities.

The American colonists called these mounds "old forts", and this one had large red sandstone blocks that had been placed at the top, suggesting the site may once have been part of a fortification of some kind.

Around this time (1750s–1760s) a far sighted businessman-farmer, anticipating that any settlements west of the Alleghenies had to funnel down Nemacolin's Trail to the river crossing acted to acquire ownership of the lands, which ultimately gave the area its later historic and current name: Brownsville, Pennsylvania.

Ebenezer Zane, afterward a famed Indian fighter and guide, was engaged at the same time and in the same way with a small party of men on lands which he had taken up at or near the mouth of Sandy Creek.

[4] A third and larger group that included George Rogers Clark, had gathered at the mouth of the Little Kanawha River (the present site of Parkersburg, West Virginia).