Greetings!

Gale Blackmer, GSA Connects 2023 General Co-Chair

Jessica Moore, GSA Connects 2023 General Co-Chair

We are pleased to welcome you to Pittsburgh for GSA Connects 2023! Pittsburgh is a city built on geology and steeped in history. Located at the point where the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers join to form the Ohio, this confluence forms a part of human history spanning millennia. The nearby massive sandstone overhangings of the Meadowcroft Rockshelter preserve records of Indigenous activity dating back 19,000 years, and ancient Adena burial mounds rise in conical symmetry from local landscapes. In colonial times, the strategically located settlement started its life as a series of five forts: Prince George (British, 1754); Duquesne (French, 1754); Pitt (British, 1758); Mercer, temporary during construction of Fort Pitt; and Lafayette (American, 1792). The city grew on the backs of river commerce, coal, and steel. The rich Pittsburgh Coal seam lies below the city, but the higher parts of the Pennsylvanian-age section are displayed in steep cliffs and hillsides throughout the city. The rugged topography along the three rivers leads to a transportation system that is a web of bridges and tunnels and that can also lead to a high incidence of landslides. Pittsburgh is truly an engineering marvel. A ride on the Incline up Mount Washington or a river cruise on the Gateway Clipper will give you a first-hand feel for the landscape.

The city you are visiting is much different from the last time Pittsburgh hosted the GSA Annual Meeting in 1959. Coal and steel have ceded prominence to natural gas, carbon and energy storage, technology, education, and medicine. The legacy lives on, though, in the many art, cultural, and educational resources associated with industrialists Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, banker Andrew Mellon, and food manufacturer H.J. Heinz.

If you want a break from the meeting, you can find many fine museums that fit a variety of interests, including the avant-garde pop art of Pittsburgh native Andy Warhol, whose namesake museum is located within walking distance of the meeting venue. The heritage of European immigrants who came to mine coal and make steel lives on in great ethnic restaurants, especially German, Polish, and Italian. A stroll down Smallman Street in the nearby Strip District not only affords a cacophony of sights, smells, and all the black and gold attire you never knew you needed, but also offers a glimpse into the melting pot of cultures that shapes the city’s history. Pittsburgh has a great food scene, from sandwich shops like Primanti Brothers (fries right on the sandwich!) to brats to fine dining, with local breweries and distilleries for something to wash it all down. If you have time to get out of town, Ohiopyle State Park with its Class 3 whitewater, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, and the Drake Well Museum chronicling the birth of the petroleum industry are all an hour or two away, along with any number of other great hikes, parks, and historic sites.

Our meeting venue, the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, sits just 100 yards from the point on the Allegheny River where William Clark launched his newly constructed keelboat and sailed down the Ohio to join Meriwether Lewis and begin their Corps of Discovery Expedition into the wild expanses of the western territories. It is with that spirit of intrepid exploration, inquiry, and discovery that we welcome you to Pittsburgh for GSA Connects 2023.

Yinz have a good time!

Gale Blackmer, Pennsylvania State Geologist
Jessica Moore, West Virginia State Geologist

GSA 2023 Connects General Co-Chairs