Wood County’s newest park, Fort Boreman is the site of a Civil War fort on a hilltop overlooking the scenic valley formed by the confluence of the Little Kanawha and Ohio rivers at Parkersburg. Built by Union troops to protect the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad terminal and the key commercial river facilities in the valley, Fort Boreman was named for West Virginia’s first governor, Parkersburg citizen Arthur I. Boreman.
The fort site became a favorite overlook and picnic area in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, but by the mid-1900s it had become overgrown and forgotten. Plans to create a park were initiated in 1997, and the Fort Boreman site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2003. Open year-round if weather permits.
