Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette The new Fort Necessity visitors center features 4,500 square feet of exhibit space, a 60-seat auditorium and theater, a 700-square-foot special programs room, a bookstore and a gift shop. Click photo for larger image. If you go: Fort Necessity    The grand opening for the new Fort Necessity/National Road Interpretive and Education Center will be Saturday.    That day, parking for the events will be at Braddock's Inn on U.S. Route 40, with free shuttle buses to run every 15 minutes, beginning at 8:30 a.m. Parking will be $5 per car. Handicapped-accessible parking will be available at the Fort Necessity National Battlefield.    Visitors who want to see the new center will have to pick up a ticket with a time at the old visitors center.    Programs, including an encampment by French and Indian War re-enactors, a market fair and interpretive programs will begin at 9 a.m. and run all day.    The official ribbon cutting ceremony will be held at 11 a.m. It will include a keynote address by David McCullough, the author of "The Johnstown Flood," "Truman," "John Adams" and "1776." He will stay at the center from 1:45 to 2:30 p.m. to sign books.    Robert Griffing, whose paintings of the scenes of the French and Indian War are on display at the center, will sign books and prints of his work starting at 2:20 p.m. Saturday and again on Sunday.

David Whitemyer and Brian Reedy were sitting around trying to choose models to pose as two guys in a Route 40 tavern 200 years ago.

The idea was to create a museum exhibit with two men sitting at a table and the female innkeeper standing nearby. Visitors viewing it would hear a voice-over of the three talking about building a national road.

As Mr. Whitemyer and Mr. Reedy looked through the models' photos, they didn't find anyone who they thought looked the part. They were looking for one scrawny, little guy and one big, brawny guy. Then they realized that described themselves.

On Saturday, the replicas of the two men will take their places in a permanent exhibit in the museum that is part of the new visitors center at the Fort Necessity National Battlefield in Fayette County.

Mr. Whitemyer is project manager for the company that designed the museum, and Mr. Reedy is a park ranger.

The new building isn't anything like the old visitors center, which was built in 1965 and had a small theater, gift shop, restrooms and a view of Fort Necessity.

It's an interpretive and education center that's an example of the evolving art of museums. Artifacts, including 80 that were found during an archeological dig of the battlefield, are displayed in context with their parts in the story.

A display on the July 3, 1754, battle has two murals by Robert Griffing along the walls of a round room. On one side is the view as seen by the French and Indian fighters. On the other is the view for the British and Colonial fighters.

Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette David Whitemyer checks one of the cast figures that are part of a Fort Necessity visitors center display depicting a historic tavern along Route 40. Mr. Whitemyer, production manager for Christopher Chadbourne and Associates, served as a model for the figure. Click photo for larger image.

In the center of the room is a statue of a British soldier dragging a wounded comrade off the battlefield. A bayonet, a small half-pound cannonball and the remains of a pistol which were found on the site are mounted inside the panels in the room that explain the scene.

The center tells the stories of the battle in which George Washington surrendered to the French and Indians and of the National Road. The 200th anniversary of Congress authorizing construction of the 600-mile federal road from Cumberland, Md., to Vandalia, Ill., is coming up in March.

The new building which houses the museum cost $6 million and the exhibits cost $1.4 million. Designing the museum's interior cost another $500,000, said David Ballard, a project manager for the National Park Service.

Overall, the project cost $14 million, with the site work, demolition of the old visitors center, and construction of new parking lots at the center and a mile away at the gravesite for Gen. Edward Braddock, who was killed in the French and Indian War.

Still to be completed is a playground at the center. Maryellen Snyder, who is in charge of visitors services at the park, said the playground, which is to be based on the history of the fort and the National Road, will be finished in the spring.

With the education center located out of view of the recreated fort, a path will lead visitors "through the forest to emerge on the scene just as it was when George Washington got there," said Ken Mabery, the park superintendent. The original fort stood for 28 days before the French burned it down.

The idea of the education center is to explain the events that occurred near the site and to entice visitors to see the sites for themselves, Mr. Mabery said.

	Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette At Fort Necessity's new visitors center, which opens Saturday, a worker walks past a mural depicting British troops gathering in formation near the fort. Click photo for larger image.

Part of that education will include the likenesses of Mr. Whitemyer, and Mr. Reedy talking and having a drink.

As the models for the figures, the men had to sit and have molds made of their faces and hands from the same material used by dentists to take molds of teeth. Then, sitting in the same chairs and at the same table as used in the exhibit, the two men were wrapped in plaster of Paris so their replicas would fit perfectly into the exhibit.

If the new center lasts as long as the old one, Mr. Whitemyer will be able to come back in 40 years and see a much younger version of himself, still sitting and talking about a road that was approved 165 years before he was born.