Belpre: Ohio's First Permanent Settlement South of the River

Belpre, Ohio sits directly across the Ohio River from Parkersburg, West Virginia, and claims to be among the earliest permanent American settlements in the Northwest Territory. A group of Revolutionary War veterans from New England established it in seventeen eighty-eight and eighty-nine as part of the Ohio Company of Associates land grants, naming it after the French phrase for beautiful prairie. The early settlers built a fortified blockhouse called Farmers Castle, one of several defensive structures along the river during the period of violent conflict with Native peoples over the Ohio Valley.

Belpre's location on the river made it a natural ferry crossing and trading point. Blennerhassett Island, where Aaron Burr and Harman Blennerhassett were alleged to have plotted a scheme against the United States, lies in the Ohio River near Parkersburg, close to Belpre.