Eight acres of the original site of Fort Ligonier have been preserved, with the subsurface features restored and the above-ground elements reconstructed. The inner fort is 200 feet square, defended by four bastions and accessed by three gates; inside is the officers’ mess, barracks, quartermaster, guardroom, underground magazine, commissary, and officers’ quarters. Immediately outside the fort is General Forbes’s hut. An outer retrenchment, 1,600 feet long, surrounds the fort. Other external buildings include the Pennsylvania hospital (two wards and a surgeon’s hut), a smokehouse, a saw mill, bake ovens, a log dwelling and a forge. Recently added are three civilian wagons:

Conestoga Wagons added to Fort Ligonier for 250th Anniversary: 1758-2008

Following years of research and thirty months of construction, reproductions of mid-eighteenth century civilian “Conestoga” wagons are now on display at Fort Ligonier. The wagons have been added to the reconstructed military siege train of General John Forbes, which consists of artillery, carts and wagons.

No mid-eighteenth century Conestogas are known to exist. These wagons are based on period descriptions, artwork, archeological evidence from Fort Ligonier, and various wagon elements that have survived.

The new Conestogas at Fort Ligonier represent three types of farm wagons, of which 200 to 400 were hired in 1758 to transport Forbes’s supplies. Each bright blue and red wagon, covered by hemp canvas, carried about 1,500 pounds of cargo. They were pulled by two to four horses and controlled by a driver who walked behind the wagon or who rode one of the horses.

The two small wagons are styled “Pennsylvania Wagons I and II,” which are the type that originated in the Conestoga Valley of eastern Pennsylvania. The slightly larger one is a “Virginia Wagon,” which is a farm wagon developed in the Tidewater and Central regions of Virginia. Most of Forbes’s wagons were the Pennsylvania style, although the First and Second Virginia Regiments under George Washington and serving with Forbes in 1758, probably brought wagons from Virginia. The combination of features from both styles eventually evolved into the celebrated 19th century Conestoga Wagon that was used to settle the west.