Tonight, the dramatic conclusion of The War That Made America will air right here on WQED at 9:00.

Next OnQ, we'll continue our coverage of this major PBS production with a look at one of the key battlefields located right here in western Pennsylvania.

See how Fort Necessity played a key role in the French and Indian War, and how the site is used today.

Also next, The season to celebrate.

We'll look back at 16 Sundays with a local Steelers fan photographer.

Stay connected, OnQ starts right now.

Welcome to OnQ magazine I'm Stacy Smith.

Tonight at 9:00, WQED will air the dramatic conclusion of The War That Made America.

This locally produced film premiered on PBS stations across the country last week.

If you caught the premiere, you know that the film chronicles the French and Indian War.

And if you happen to live amidst the premiere, well, you can still catch up tonight.

So don't let that stop you from tuning in.

And now, as part of our continuing coverage of The War That Made America, we're going to take you to Fort Necessity, one of the oldest battlefields in North America.

You have no choice.

We will make our stand here.

Fort necessity is a surprisingly small fort with a surprisingly large story It was the opening battle of what is now known in America as the French and Indian War.

It filled our trenches with water.

It is the war that made America.

It was prior to the Revolutionary War, but the results of the French and Indian Wa led us to the Revolutionary War.

It set the stage for the Revolutionary War and the independence of America.

We're inside the fort stockade, all of the post sticking up out of the ground around me.

Here is the stockade.

And right behind me is the fort storehouse.

Which kept some of George Washington stores leading up to the battle in Fort Necessity.

This is on of the oldest battlefield sites, in North America, and certainly in the United States.

And it has very high sided integrity.

It is because our ancestors knew that George Washington's sites were very important.

And this was something that really led to our nation.

When you pull into the driveway, into the park driveway, you might notice a sign sayin charming field for an encounter.

That's a quote from George Washington, because it's a big meadow.

It's about a mile and a half long, about 200 yards wide.

There was grass for the animals and water for men and animals here.

Nobody can ambush you here.

You can see all the way around.

And if you encounter French and Indians, according to the military tactics that Washington read about in the books, you never had a battle before.

But the books say line tactics.

And so that's what he's thinking when he comes here, that this would be a if you did encounter French and Indians, you would use line tactics where.

They then from every little rising tree, bush stump and stone kept up a constant fire, which unfortunately the Indians had read the book.

And so they took to the trees, and he became surrounded and outnumbered their brethren at the.

We came a great way to visit us, and many sorts of evils had befallen you.

By the way, when the National Park Service says interpretation.

We're talking about telling the story, interpreting the story so that people can understand it.

String of wampum to clear up your eyes and mind.

and remove all the bitterness of your spirit.

When visitors come to the interpretive center, the first thing they do is get greeted by Tanaghrisson, the Half Creek King with the edge of the woods ceremony, a ceremony where he presents wampum.

We'll get the cobwebs cleared off of you.

Any of the evils of travel.

From there, you start taking footsteps back into time.

And from when you walk into the exhibits, you find yourself immersed immediately in the, Jumonville Glen Skirmish.

You hear the sound.

You, see the sights.

You see shadows moving through the woods.

What we were trying to do was, offer to the visitor a much more in-depth experience than they were receiving previously.

There's so much of the history that's been revealed over the past couple of decades, related to the French and Indian War, that the other visitor center just, wasn't able to tell.

The old visitor center was sat on the edge of the battlefield.

And while that was convenient to be able to stand in there and look down at the fort, conversely, you stood at the fort and could look up and see the visitor center.

So we've since discovered that, you know, that is an intrusion really kind of diminishes the visitor experience.

So this new center, I think, with the exhibits, really allows visitors to see that it wasn't just a place where people came together and fought, but really it was about three different cultures coming together in this area.

This park is so special.

It really is a jewel.

And, George Washington was here is the beginning of so much history of the region.

It segways into, to the goal of American independence.

And, just hope that people get as excited as I am about being here.

And that's what I want to take, is a sense of history and and how it continues on through today and how it relates to events today.

When somebody leaves here, I would like him to have in their mind that George Washington didn't come for war onto the scene in the Revolutionary War.

He was once a 21 year old young military gentleman fighting for his commission, fighting for advancement, but fighting for a bigger and broader goal.

If one person can understand, put themselves in the mind or the place of one person on this battlefield, we will have done our job.

Also housed at Fort Necessity, an exhibit on the road that America built or other really, that built America, the National Road was created by an act of Congress in 1806, running from Maryland through western Pennsylvania and onto Illinois.

And to learn more about Fort Necessity, log on to our website, wqed.org and click the OnQ logo on the first page.

And don't forget to watch part two of WQED documentary film The War That Made America.

It airs tonight at 9:00 right here on WQED TV 13.