Parkersburg to Point Pleasant
I woke up early as I always do, so I let my son sleep in for awhile. After running a few miles on the hotel treadmill, after cleaning up and dressing, and after finishing breakfast, I still had some time to kill. Maybe I could take an early-morning stroll through Parkersburg, West Virginia and check it out? A flag waved invitingly from the top of a nearby hillside and I figured I should see what I could find there.
Quincy Hill Park
A long concrete stairway hugged the embankment up from Avery St. (Street View). The climb seemed endless although the views improved with each higher step. I spotted a couple of deer quietly foraging towards the summit in an otherwise sleeping city. The deer paid me no attention; they didn’t care. At the top I found the flagpole plus a mobile phone tower and an open space with a playground. I’d uncovered Quincy Hill Park. I walked around awhile longer through the struggling Rust Belt town, with just as many properties emptied as occupied. Then I returned to the hotel to prepare for the ridiculously over-planned outing ahead.
Three new county captures happened in quick succession. We headed south to Jackson County. Then we took a short jog across the Ohio River into Meigs County in neighboring Ohio. Back to the most direct route, we drove onward into Mason County where several more adventures awaited. Specifically I targeted the Mason county seat, the town of Point Pleasant at the confluence of the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers.
Fort Randolph
We arrived at Fort Randolph. The original structure disappeared a couple of hundred years ago so the palisade on the edge of town was a reconstruction. Fort Randolph guarded the farthest edge of the frontier during the American Revolution, a refuge for the Virginia militia as it battled British forces and their Native American allies. It saw limited action before its abandonment in 1779.
However, one significant event did take place there during its brief existence. The Shawnee chief Cornstalk hoped to remain neutral during the war and he came to Fort Randolph on a diplomatic mission. The Americans detained him and later executed him after a band of unidentified Natives, presumably unaffiliated with Cornstalk, killed an American soldier outside of the fort. Cornstalk’s death greatly offended people on both sides of the conflict although the government of Virginia never held anyone accountable.
The public could only get inside the reconstructed fort on special occasions so we were surprised when we saw the gates wide open. I figured we’d only get to stroll around the perimeter. That didn’t seem to be the case that day so we walked right in. Apparently workers were cleaning it up for the season or something because we could hear signs of activity inside some of the buildings. Colonial reenactors didn’t generally drive pickup trucks and we saw plenty of those inside the fort too. So we kept quiet, snapped a few photos and walked back out. No harm no foul.
Mothman
Really though, I chose Point Pleasant purely for Mothman. I won’t bother to reexplain the story. Readers can review what I posted a few months ago. The whole situation interested me so I made my personal visit a priority, not so much as a believer but as as someone who appreciated quirky roadside attractions. I’ve visited places depicted in Twelve Mile Circle many times before. Articles lead to visits, leading to even more articles.
First we stopped at the Mothman statue near the corner of 4th and Main (map). Its glorious shiny silver surface and grotesque pose displayed Mothman in all his mythical glory. Three generations of women from the same family admired the same scene so we helped each other take group photos with the menacing otherworldly being.
Then we stopped next door at the “World’s Only Mothman Museum.” I believed the claim because, after all, did the world really need more than one Mothman museum? For a modest fee, visitors entered a single room that exhibited newspaper clippings, eyewitnesses accounts and props from the resulting movie. It seemed wonderfully kitschy even if the attached gift shop rivaled it in size.
My dad asked me to get him a T-shirt a few days before we left so we bought him the most obnoxious one available with a giant Mothman drawn across the chest. We brought it home and he loved it. [UPDATE: after my father passed away my older son got the shirt as his “inheritance”]
Tu-Endie-Wei State Park
We meandered a few blocks farther south to the actual corner where the Kanawha River met the Ohio. I supposed this pleasant point inspired the name Point Pleasant. Here we found Tu-Endie-Wei State Park. The original Fort Randolph once stood there. Before the American Revolution, British soldiers and their allied Virginia colonial militia defended this spot as partners in the only significant battle of the brief, obscure Lord Dunmore’s War.
Remember Cornstalk? Back in 1774, a few years before his untimely death, he led an attack on British positions at Point Pleasant. He wanted to reclaim tribal lands on the eastern side of the Ohio River, asserting that his tribe had not agreed to any such boundary. The attack failed, Cornstalk slipped back into Ohio with Dunmore on his heels, and Cornstalk soon signed a peace treaty ceding his ancestral lands. That pretty much summed up the extent of Lord Dunmore’s War. The American Revolution broke out a few months later. British and Virginia Militia forces would be shooting at each other the next time they met.
A large obelisk commemorated the Battle of Point Pleasant at Tu-Endie-Wei park. A much smaller obelisk marked Cornstalk’s grave near the spot where he died during the Revolution.
We grabbed a quick lunch and drove across the river so I could capture Gallia County, Ohio. Then we began our afternoon activities that will be described in the next installment.
Articles in the Finishing West Virginia Series
See Also: The Complete Photo Album on Flickr
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