A Virtual Tour of Prickett's Fort (Part 2)

Warning: The following images and descriptions are of the reconstructed Memorial Fort, NOT the actual eighteenth-century fortification. The original Prickett's Fort disappeared from the written record around 1780. Unfortunately, nobody alive today knows what the historic fort looked like.

Prickett's Fort State Park is a day-use park that offers a number of amenities including picnic tables, fishing, and a boat ramp that provides access to the Monongahela River. Other recreational opportunities include birding, a "bayside" nature trail, and easy access to two rail trails: the MC Trail and the Mon River Trail, which both run adjacent to the park.

The reconstructed Memorial Fort is operated by the Pricketts Fort Memorial Foundation. Anyone wishing to tour the fort must first stop by the Visitor Center and purchase an admission ticket. The Visitor Center features a modest gift shop and an upstairs gallery where visitors can view an introductory video to the park and explore some museum displays. After watching the video and exploring the museum gallery, it is but a short walk to the Memorial Fort.

Prickett's Fort

The Memorial Fort measures about 110 feet square and features a two storey blockhouse on each of the four corners. Blockhouses not only provided defenders with an elevated "lookout" position, but they also enabled shooters to fire down along the lengths of the exterior walls. The wooden stockade, or palisade, averages about twelve feet high and features numerous "loopholes," or gun ports for firing on attackers. Some frontier forts in western Virginia, such as Arbuckle's Fort in the Greenbrier Valley, had bastions in the corners rather than blockhouses. A bastion is simply a protrusion of the stockade wall in a corner. Much like blockhouses, bastions enabled defenders to shoot at attackers that have gotten up against the exterior wall.

Blockhouse and Main Gate to the Fort

The side gate is open!