Parkersburg, West Virginia

Parkersburg, West Virginia is just 25 miles from our campsite.  Besides driving around to get a feel for the city (and honoring Jim’s ongoing quest for excellent beer by stopping at Parkersburg’s North End Tavern -- Jim highly recommends the Five Way IPA) we visited two places:  The Oil and Gas Museum and Fort Boreman, a Civil War military encampment.

Oil and Gas Museum: Interesting but badly in need of a curator.  Most of the items aren’t “exhibited;” they are just there with a label stating something along the lines of “Photo of John Doe of the xxxx Oil Company” or the name of a piece of equipment, usually with no explanation of the relevancy to the energy industry.  

However, we did see a very interesting video about the history of the oil and gas industry in West Virginia.  The state originally was part of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and oil was discovered before the Civil War.  Shortly after the war started, the Confederate Army set the oil wells on fire.  In order to protect their investment, oil well owners proposed that a separate state be created and that it be part of the Union and not the Confederacy.  According to the information we were given, a representative from the oil industry personally visited President Lincoln on Christmas Eve, found the White House closed, climbed in a window, and convinced President Lincoln to sign the legislation.

Fort Boreman:  Constructed in 1863, it had an expansive view of the River, the railroad, and the “pikes” or roads, so it was invaluable to the Union army.  It was named for the new state’s first governor, Arthur Boreman, a prominent Parkersburg resident.  

An exhibit in the basement of the Oil and Gas Museum. If someone lit a match in this place, it would explode.

This photo and the next are of the building and grounds of the Oil and Gas Museum.  In the one above, you can see Jim taking a photo of the mural on the building.

This panorama shot gives a feel for what the Union soldiers could see from their perch at Fort Boreman.  At the time, the Baltimore and Ohio railroad was the most important east-west railway in the country, linked the east coast with the interior, and supplied the Union army with supplies and troops.   

A closer view of the Ohio River and part of Parkersburg as seen from Fort Boreman.  During the civil war there were five military hospitals, a supply center and a commissary in Parkersburg.  Hundreds of thousands of union soldiers passed through Parkersburg before being ferried across the river. 

A view from Fort Boreman of Parkersburg, West Virginia, which was settled in 1785.  Today, major employers are Camden-Clark Memorial Hospital, DuPont, the Wood County Board of Education, and the US Treasury Department’s Bureau of Public Debt, where every US Savings Bond bought or sold has been processing since 1957 -- and where we turned around twice (in the Honda, not the motor home) while trying to figure out Parkersburg.