Meadowcroft Is One of The Earliest Known Sites Human Habitation

PHOTO BY HUCK BEARD

Visitors to a local landmark are invited to travel back in time nearly 19,000 years to one of the region’s earliest known sites of human habitation.

Meadowcroft Rockshelter and Historic Village in Avella opened the doors for its 57th season on Saturday, May 2. The archaeological site in Washington County offers a glimpse into the life of some of the Indigenous tribes that called Pennsylvania home long before European colonization.

Based on the various types of ancient artifacts found there — stone tools, pottery fragments and evidence of ice-age fire pits — archaeologists concluded that the titular rockshelter, a natural sandstone overhang shaped by erosion above Cross Creek, once served as a campsite for prehistoric hunters and gatherers.

PHOTO BY HUCK BEARD

Now, it welcomes visitors through guided tours, which begin at the site’s Barensfeld Center. Meadowcroft also offers multiple recreated historic settings. Folks can try their hand at using an atlatl, a prehistoric spear, at its 16th-century Monongahela Indian Village; explore the similarities and differences between European settlers and Eastern Woodland tribes at two 1770s-era trading posts; and experience 19th-century rural life through the Upper Ohio Valley Village, complete with re-enactors and live demonstrations of traditional arts such as blacksmithing.

The site’s hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. It will be open Saturday and Sunday in May; Wednesday through Sunday from Memorial Day to Labor Day and Saturday and Sunday from Labor Day through Nov. 23.