Redstone Creek (Pennsylvania)

Redstone Creek is a historically important widemouthed canoe and river boat-navigable brook-sized tributary stream of the Monongahela River in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. The creek is 28.4 miles (45.7 km) long,[5] running from headwaters on Chestnut Ridge north through the city of Uniontown and reaching the Monongahela at Brownsville. Located in a 1/4-mile-wide valley with low streambanks, the site was ideal for ship building in a region geologically most often characterized by steep-plunging relatively inaccessible banks — wide enough to launch and float several large boats, and indeed steamboats after 1811, and slow-moving enough to provide good docks and parking places while craft were outfitting.

Redstone Creek Tributary to Monongahela River
Location of Redstone Creek mouth Show map of Pennsylvania Redstone Creek (Pennsylvania) (the United States) Show map of the United States
Location
Country	United States
State	Pennsylvania
County	Fayette
City	Uniontown
Physical characteristics
Source	Georges Creek divide on west side of Chestnut Ridge
• location	about 3 miles east of Fairchance, Pennsylvania[1]
• coordinates	39°49′03″N 079°41′25″W[2]
• elevation	2,370 ft (720 m)[1]
Mouth	Monongahela River
• location	about 0.25 miles north of Brownsville, Pennsylvania[1]
• coordinates	40°02′09″N 079°52′32″W[2]
• elevation	744 ft (227 m)[1]
Length	27.73 mi (44.63 km)[3]
Basin size	108.60 square miles (281.3 km2)[4]
Discharge
• location	Monongahela River
• average	152.95 cu ft/s (4.331 m3/s) at mouth with Monongahela River[4]
Basin features
Progression	northwest
River system	Monongahela River
Tributaries
• left	Coal Lick Run Jennings Run Colvin Run
• right	Lick Run Cove Run Rankin Run (and Bute Rune) Bolden Run Allen Run Shear Hollow Crabapple Run Washwater Run
Waterbodies	Hutchinson Reservoir No.3 Hutchinson Reservoir No.2 Hutchinson Reservoir No.1

Brownsville, at the mouth of Redstone Creek, was an important center for boat-building, including the manufacture of paddlewheel steamboats that traveled as far as New Orleans, and, later, the upper navigable part of the Missouri. Flatboat construction is documented at the site from 1782, and the Braddock Expedition established a supply base (blockhouse) on the stream's south bank which the French destroyed after first taking Fort Necessity in 1754. The creek hosting this important activity played a critical role in the transshipment of goods and settlers in the Mississippi Basin, as it enabled the other industries in and around Brownsville to outfit and equip the settlers headed west.

Nestled in the foothills on the west side of the mountains, Brownsville was a gateway funneling settlers to the Ohio Country, the lands of the Louisiana Territory, and did so until well after 1853, when railroads reached the Missouri River at Kanesville, Iowa (one Emigrant Trails destination of the town's flatboats), the far west and the Oregon Country —for the town astride the shortest, if not the easiest, land route across the great barrier to east-west traffic presented by the Allegheny Mountains.