10/21/2026
Michael Baker International senior officials recently cut the ribbon for a new “Michael Baker Corner” exhibit at the award-winning Beaver Area (PA) Heritage Museum in the hometown of company founder Michael Baker Jr. (1912-1977).
The permanent display, developed to mark the company’s 85th anniversary, measures 10 feet high by 8 feet wide. It showcases 30 historical images and related texts documenting the rags-to-riches story of the founder as well as photographs of employees, its Beaver headquarters building from the early 1970s to the early 1990s, and a host of local and international projects which propelled Michael Baker into an engineering giant.
Wielding the scissors of the ribbon cutting was Terri Vojnovich, a 51-year Michael Baker veteran and current Executive Administrator. Also participating, left to right were Brian Peiritsch (Vice President, Corporate Communications), John Tricini (Transportation Practice Executive),Paula Misorski (Executive Administrative Assistant), Lori Wittebort (Administrative Assistant) and John Robinson (Pittsburgh Office Executive).
The partnership with Michael Baker dates to the Museum’s founding in 1998 and includes several current long-term projects. For the past two years, a team of Michael Baker archaeologists and cultural resource specialists has analyzed, organized and prioritized tens of thousands of archaeological artifacts from Beaver’s Revolutionary War Fort McIntosh. The fort was important nationally as it served as the first permanent home of the first professionally trained, standing U.S. Army in peacetime, known as the 1st American Regiment, which exists today as The Old Guard, also known as the Presidential Honor Guard. It also hosted the 1785 Treaty of Fort McIntosh and housed and protected the 1785 survey team that established a point of beginning for the nation’s Public Land Survey System grid, from which a majority of territories of the U.S. have been surveyed, all the way to the West Coast, and including Alaska and Hawaii. The best of the manmade artifacts, excavated in the mid-1970s, and held in boxes ever since, are on exhibit this year in the museum’s display, “Fort McIntosh: Its People and Archaeology.”
Since 2014, a team of the Museum’s collections management volunteers has been engaged in the work to collect, transfer and catalogue the entirety of Michael Baker’s historic materials collection. The archive consists of thousands of print photographs, photographic negatives, and 35mm slide photographs; 8mm and 16mm film on reels; project-specific microfiche dating to 1955; and internal and external publications such as newsletters, magazines and technical journals. It also includes historical records as well as reprints of industry trade articles that feature the company, highlight a company project, or celebrate employee achievements. Collection features include the founder’s personal effects, including his office desk, large globe, photo portrait, books from his personal library and many other materials. Long-term plans for the cataloged collection include online Internet accessibility intended to serve academia and research.
The Museum’s permanent display also includes an antique wooden surveyor’s transit used in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by the founder’s father, Michael Baker Sr. (1868-1940), who served for 50 years as Beaver County Surveyor.
Learn more at www.mbakerintl.com and www.beaverheritage.org.
