In the 1790s, as residents of the newly formed United States began moving west into the Northwest Territory, a region controlled by American Indians and claimed by the British, President George Washington sent General Anthony Wayne and about 3,000 regulars and militia to build a series of forts between the Ohio and Maumee rivers to protect settlers. About 1,000 warriors awaited them, and Wayne's decisive victory at the 1794 battle at Fallen Timbers led to other conflicts, treaties, and eventually the War of 1812 with the British, after which the United States ultimately gained control of the territory. Archeological explorations and historical research in the 1980s and 1990s identified 187 acres of open fields and woods at the intersection of US 23 and I 475 as the actual battlefield. A bronze statue of Wayne stands on a bluff overlooking the Maumee River in Side Cut Metropark, where the battle was long thought to have occurred, and Fort Miamis on River Road, built by the British in 1794 to stop U.S. military advances in the Maumee Valley and strengthen American Indian support against expanding U.S. settlement, was later used again during the War of 1812.
