Germany Valley: The Last Frontier Fort

Germany Valley in Pendleton County takes its name from the wave of German-speaking settlers who began arriving here in the seventeen sixties, drawn south from Pennsylvania along the old frontier roads. The first to come was the Hinkle family, originally spelled Henckel, who migrated from North Carolina around seventeen sixty-one. John Justus Hinkle built a blockhouse and stockade known as Hinkle's Fort, built to guard against further raids after the French and Indian War. John Justus Hinkle senior arrived with his wife, their twelve children, and their families, so the settlement began as a whole clan at once. During the Revolution the fort served as headquarters and training ground for the North Fork Military Company, organized by his sons and sons-in-law.

Other families followed, and their names are still written on the landscape. Harman Knob, Dolly Ridge, and Harper Gap all preserve the surnames of settler families who cleared these hollows more than two and a half centuries ago.

Topographic maps of Pendleton County remain a record of who arrived first. The valley itself is an upland basin in the Allegheny Mountains, about ten miles long and two and a half miles wide, with North Fork Mountain along its eastern side and Seneca Rocks rising near its northern end. The fort is gone now, but a stone monument inside an iron fence marks the site along the valley road east of Riverton.