Making Meadowcroft

It all started with Camp Meadowcroft. Founded by brothers Albert and Delvin Miller in 1959, the campsite included a campfire circle, softball diamond, Adirondack shelters, and more. ​

Throughout the late 1950s and into the 1960s, boy and girl scouts, church groups, and schools would tour the site and camp overnight.​

Boy Scout Troop 71 cooking at the camping spot on the Village Green.​

Adirondack shelters were used for overnight stays and picnicking at Camp Meadowcroft.​

The Miller brothers spent much of the 1960s adding historic structures to the site, including the Miller log house, a blacksmith shop, a one-room schoolhouse, and a museum to document rural life in the region. Camp Meadowcroft became Meadowcroft Village.​

As Meadowcroft expanded so did the educational opportunities it presented. Even before the museum’s official opening, school children, historical societies, and college groups would visit Albert for programs on history and nature.

An honorary incorporation dinner was held on Oct. 20, 1968 for the dedicated volunteers and guests that worked so hard to make Meadowcroft Village a reality. ​

As the community heard of the Millers’ efforts, locals began offering Meadowcroft their family heirlooms, histories, and even buildings to bolster the Meadowcroft artifact and archival collections.​

As the museum developed on top of the hill, it would be what was found below that would make Meadowcroft a name known ‘round the world.​

Meadowcroft sits atop a roughly 72-foot sandstone cliff—an area historically known as “The Cliffs.” It was along this cliff face, under a large overhang, that Albert came across a groundhog burrow on Nov. 12, 1955. ​

He found some artifacts excavated by the groundhog and decided to enlarge the hole for further investigation. He unearthed pieces of burnt bone, flint flakes, freshwater mussel shells, and an intact flint knife, all of which validated Albert’s long-held theory that native people once used the rockshelter as a campsite.​

Albert Miller wrote of his discovery on Nov. 12, 1955.

On July 31, 1976, the Miller Point was discovered by Joe Yedlowski during the archaeological excavation of the Meadowcroft Rockshelter. This discovery would contribute to one of the biggest controversies in North American archaeology - the idea that the continent was inhabited well before the 11,500 years previously believed.​

The 1980s saw major developments as a Visitor Center was built and the Miller Museum replaced Camp Meadowcroft’s Adirondack shelters to make room for its growing collection. The museum building was constructed in stages throughout the 1980s.​

In this photo, Albert Miller, Delvin Miller, and Meadowcroft Foundation board member Jack Piatt cut the ribbon on the new visitor center.​

By the early 1990s, the aging Miller brothers saw that they needed outside help to keep their dream alive. To ensure their legacy would last beyond their years, the Meadowcroft Foundation entered into a joint operating agreement with the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania in 1993, and shortly thereafter took on the name Meadowcroft Rockshelter and Museum of Rural Life. The official merger took place in 2000.​

In this photo, representatives of the Meadowcroft Foundation and the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania gathered for a press conference in the historic Miller School to announce the joint operating agreement in July 1993.​

In 2005, the Meadowcroft Rockshelter was designated a National Historic Landmark.

In 2007, a new enclosure was constructed to make the archaeological site more accessible to visitors.

Today, thousands of visitors from across the country and around the world visit Meadowcroft Rockshelter and Historic Village each season to learn more about the peopling of North America.​