Fort Pitt is located in Point Park, on the tip of this peninsula, a state park that has been a National Historic Landmark since 1960. (Greater Pittsburg Convention & Visitors Bureau)

On Jan. 3, Pennsylvania state-funded construction crews entered Pittsburgh's Point State Park and began burying a 250-year-old bastion to make way for concert and festival grounds.

The Fort Pitt Music Bastion, one of the only remnants of the French and Indian War's Fort Pitt, built in 1759, is now covered with 10 feet of demolition debris and sand. This spring, while work continues on a $35 million construction project in downtown's state park, a group of historians and citizens is determined to unearth the bastion.

"Without Fort Pitt, we would probably all be speaking French right now," says Will Rouleau, co-founder of SaveFortPitt.org.

The odds are against Rouleau's group, however.

"There are no current plans to uncover the bastion; however, it was filled and protected in a way that is reversible, so it can be uncovered at a future date," says Jane Crawford, spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, in an e-mail.

Fort Pitt served as a refuge for 600 men, women, and children in 1763, the last year of the French and Indian War. Until recently, all that remained of the fort was the Block House, built in 1764, and two of the five original bastions. The Monongahela Bastion currently houses the Fort Pitt Museum, and the Music Bastion is no longer visible.

"The excuse they used to bury the Bastion was illegitimate," says Michael Nixon, co-founder of SaveFortPitt.org. "The only reason they buried it was because it was an inconvenience to their motive of building a flat surface for concerts and food vendors."

For Nixon, Roulau, and at least 2,000 others who have signed the SaveFortPitt.org petition, the bastion stands as a symbol of what lies below it: the footprint of Fort Pitt.

Last week, members of SaveFortPitt.org were surveying the construction site and came upon part of the fort that workers had struck during their digging.

"We made a discovery just the other day of one of the casements—that is, a subterranean room where gunpowder and artillery materials were stored," Nixon says.

Nixon expressed concern that the site is not being properly maintained during construction. "We are keeping the site under observation. There is not an archeologist standing at every site that they are digging," Nixon says.

According to Crawford, "The work is being supervised by the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and the Department of General Services project staff with oversight of archaeological professionals, as we requested."

SaveFortPitt.org wants to unearth the bastion, restore it to be a grand entrance to Point State Park, and ultimately gain the fort classification as a World Heritage Site.

"Restored, it would be a magnificent edifice," says Richard Lang, an archaeologist who supervised a partial excavation of the fort in 1964.

Nixon hopes that restoration of the bastion will not only serve to celebrate the history of Fort Pitt but will "celebrate what the site means in world history, to Americans, Europeans, African Americans, and Native Americans."

The immediate plan of SaveFortPitt.org is to formally organize as a nonprofit.

"We would like to get the organizations responsible for the demolition of the Bastion to see the error of their ways," Nixon says. "Then we may be able to work together in developing a plan to finish a full restoration of the bastion."

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