The Kittanning Path was a major east-west Native American trail in western Pennsylvania used during the 18th century. It provided an overland route for the Lenape, Shawnee, and early European settlers across the Allegheny Mountains, terminating at its western end on the Allegheny River at the Native American village of Kittanning (at present day Kittanning, Pennsylvania), the largest Native American village in the Ohio Country west of the Alleghenies. It tranversed a section of Pennsylvania closed to white settlement by the original settlement treaty with William Penn.
In an attempt to settle frontier borders, the English and Native Americans signed the Treaty of Fort Stanwix after the French and Indian War. It opened some of Pennsylvania west of the Alleghenies to white settlement. In the 1750s, this area had been the scene of a fierce raids by Native Americans against white settlement, and a major British retribution campaign during the French and Indian War.
The Kittanning Path fell into disuse in the 1780s and was abandoned. A section of the original path is preserved in northwestern Cambria County.
Read more about Kittanning Path: Description (East To West), History, Preservation
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)