Prickett's Fort State Park is a

West Virginia West Virginia is a mountainous U.S. state, state in the Southern United States, Southern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States.The United States Census Bureau, Census Bureau and the Association of American ...

state park State parks are parks or other protected areas managed at the sub-national level within those nations which use "Federated state, state" as a political subdivision. State parks are typically established by a state to preserve a location on accou ...

north of Fairmont, near the confluence of Prickett's Creek and the

Monongahela River The Monongahela River ( , ), sometimes referred to locally as the Mon (), is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed August 15, 2011 river on the Allegheny Plateau in nor ...

. The park features a reconstructed refuge fort and commemorates life on the Virginia frontier during the late 18th century.Prickett's Fort Foundation website

Historic fort

Historic Prickett's Fort was built to defend early European settlers of what today is

from raids by hostile Native Americans, a portion of whose territory the settlers appropriated after the

Treaty of Fort Stanwix The Treaty of Fort Stanwix was a treaty signed between representatives from the Iroquois and Great Britain (accompanied by negotiators from New Jersey, Virginia and Province of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania) in 1768 at Fort Stanwix. It was negotia ...

(1768). After a band of settlers led by Daniel Greathouse perpetrated the Yellow Creek massacre in 1774, initiating

Lord Dunmore's War Lord Dunmore's War, also known as Dunmore's War, was a brief conflict in the fall of 1774 between the British Colony of Virginia and the Shawnee and Mingo in the trans-Appalachia region of the colony south of the Ohio River. Broadly, the war incl ...

, all settlers in the

Ohio River Valley The Ohio River () is a river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing in a southwesterly direction from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to its mouth on the Mississippi River in Cairo, ...

were in peril from Native American attack. Because there was safety in numbers, the settlers built a number of refuge forts, including one on the homestead of Jacob Prickett. Fairly simple in design, Prickett's Fort was little more than a hundred-foot-square log palisade built around Prickett's house. Native Americans tended to avoid such strong points, preferring to ambush small work parties. When the frontiersmen believed they were in danger of Native American attack, families gathered at such a fortified area, a procedure called "forting up". In 1774, there were at least a hundred such palisades, blockhouses, and "stations" in the Monongahela Valley, many within a thirty-mile radius of Prickett's Fort. Perhaps as many as eighty families—several hundred people—gathered at Prickett's Fort during crisis periods, where they stayed for days or even weeks. Prickett's Fort was never attacked, although militiamen from the confluence area were killed by Native Americans elsewhere.

Reconstruction

The last written mention of Prickett's Fort occurred in 1780.John Boback, PhD, a
PrickettsFort.Blogspot
(accessed April 13, 2010). In 1916, the

Sons of the American Revolution The Sons of the American Revolution (SAR), formally the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution (NSSAR), is a federally chartered patriotic organization. The National Society, a nonprofit corporation headquartered in Louisvi ...

dedicated a monument in honor of settlers who built the fort. When, in 1973, the traditional site of the fort was threatened by a Department of Natural Resources parking lot, the Marion County Historical Society created the Prickett's Fort Memorial Foundation and announced plans to reconstruct the historic structure. Discovering that the original fort site had probably been destroyed by the building of a railroad bridge in 1905, the Foundation decided to put the reconstruction on a small hill overlooking the river. Many old buildings donated to the project were torn down to provide timbers for the reconstruction. A Reconstruction Details Committee decided to design the fort reconstruction on the basis of a description by Stephen Morgan, the son of an early settler. The current reconstruction is 110 feet square with two-story blockhouses at each corner, fourteen small cabins lining internal walls, and a meeting house and store house in the common area. Unfortunately, the Morgan account was an inaccurate, perhaps even fraudulent, guide. The Prickett's Fort Memorial Foundation describes the 1974 reconstruction as "much more elaborate" than the original but claims that every feature in the reconstruction might have been found at some refuge fort in the region.

Features

In the reconstructed fort, the Foundation presents

third-person interpretation Museum theatre is the use of theatre and theatrical techniques by a museum for educational, informative, and entertainment purposes. It can also be used in a zoo, an aquarium, an art gallery, and at historic sites. It is generally performed by pr ...

of such 18th-century crafts as carpentry, blacksmithing, and spinning. A visitor center—managed by the Foundation under long-term contract with the state—includes a research library, a gift shop, and a gallery with an orientation exhibit and video. Immediately south of the fort reconstruction, the Job Prickett House, built in 1859 by a great-grandson of Jacob Prickett, displays original furnishings and tools. This typical 19th-century farmhouse is listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

. Recreational facilities at Prickett's Fort include a 400-seat outdoor amphitheater, picnic areas, nature trails, and a boat launch. The outdoor amphitheater is used by the Fairmont State University theater department each summer for musicals and dramatic productions. Prickett's Fort State Park provides access to both the MCPARC trail to Fairmont and the Mon River Trail to Morgantown. An accessibility study by

West Virginia University West Virginia University (WVU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university with its main campus in Morgantown, West Virginia, United States. Its other campuses are those of the West Virginia University Ins ...

determined that most park features were accessible to persons with disabilities.

Popular culture

Prickett's Fort State Park, is a location in

Fallout 76 ''Fallout 76'' is a 2018 action role-playing game developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. It is an installment in the ''Fallout'' series and a prequel to previous entries. Initially set in the year 2102, players ...

, as Prickett's Fort

References

External links