The Fort McIntosh Restoration Site is in the town of Beaver on the north shore of the Ohio, 25 miles below Pittsburgh and about a mile below the mouth of the Beaver River. The site itself is in a town park which is a mile and a half long, but only 85 feet wide at its deepest point. It overlooks the Ohio River about 100 feet above the normal river level.
Steep wooded cliffs across the Ohio, rising 200 feet above the fort level, are too sheer to permit any construction and thus provide a permanent backdrop of palisades and wooded ravines. Visible directly across from the fort, along the shoulder of a wider ravine, are traces of the Brodhead Road, the first trail from Fort Pitt to the Northwest. Fine residences on River Road bound the site on the North.
The town of Beaver and the fort itself are situated on a wide terrace of boulders, sand and clay associated with the Wisconsin glacial period and averaging 150 feet in depth, which extends back from the river for a distance of a little over a half mile before the gradient changes to steep slopes rising 200 feet above the town. These slopes are heavily wooded, but in places the basic sandstone formation has been rent by numerous springs which provided the original water supply for the town. The resulting broken sandstone furnished material for the fireplaces and some foundations of the fort.
The site of the fort is on the highest point of the park. Prior to 1852 when a cut was made for a railroad and access road, the park extended toward the river possibly 30 feet beyond its present limits. It slopes slightly to the southeast, but the gradient is undiscernible to the eye.
The Fort McIntosh, or 1778 level, was identified by its dark chocolate color, followed the same grade, but from 11 to 22 inches below the present surface at the curb and 6 to 8 inches at the edge of the slope.
It was not as smooth and level as at present. An 1895 photograph shows gullies caused by heavy rains, some of which had been dammed to prevent further erosion. In several places these gullies were easily identified by the same boulders and earth or clay that had been used to fill them.
Before the park was graded in 1900, some areas, particularly those at or near the heads of intersecting streets, were used as dumping grounds, both for household trash and ashes, and as fills from nearby cellar excavations. All of this made the work of the archaeologist the more difficult.