Every organization we link to: local tourism offices, the state and federal agencies that manage the land, the nonprofits and clubs that keep access open, and the universities doing the research.
Blennerhassett Island Historical State Park
Local knowledge
An island in the Ohio River reached by sternwheeler from Parkersburg, holding a reconstructed 1800 Palladian mansion, horse-drawn wagon tours and quiet riverbank walking. Site of the Burr–Blennerhassett conspiracy of 1806.
Boat access only, on a seasonal sternwheeler schedule — check the sailing times before you drive to Parkersburg.
More places like thisKnow before you go
- Boat access only, seasonally scheduled — check the sailing times
- Bicycles can be taken over on the boat
- Combine with the Blennerhassett Museum on the mainland
What you can do here
Walking here is riverbank walking on a 500-acre island in the Ohio, reached only by sternwheeler from Parkersburg. That sets the shape of the day: you get the hours between one boat and the next, shared with the mansion tour and the wagon rides. Check the sailing schedule first, since the season and times govern everything.
The reconstructed 1800 Palladian mansion is the obvious subject, with horse-drawn wagons and open river frontage around it. Light is what you can get between scheduled boats, so plan the crossing rather than the hour. The mainland Blennerhassett Museum pairs with the island if you want the whole Burr conspiracy story in one day.
An island of 500 acres in the middle of the Ohio River concentrates whatever is moving through, and May is the peak month statewide. The park publishes no bird list, so treat this as general river-corridor birding on the banks. The boat schedule, not daylight, decides how long you have, which makes early sailings worth the effort.
The island sits in the pooled Ohio, which is the calm water this activity depends on, but the park publishes no landing arrangement for private boats and its stated access is the sternwheeler from Parkersburg. Barge traffic and the main channel are the real considerations. Ask the park whether and where you may land a paddlecraft before planning around it.
Guides, gear and lodging near Blennerhassett Island Historical State Park
Place-level placement for operators within range of this trailhead, put-in or crag.
List your business hereNearby in the Mid-Ohio Valley
North Bend Rail Trail
Seventy-two miles on the old Baltimore & Ohio grade from Wolf Summit to Parkersburg, passing through more than ten tunnels and over dozens of bridges — the longest tunnel run of any rail-trail in the region and part of the coast-to-coast American Discovery Trail.
North Bend State Park
A 1,405-acre park on a horseshoe bend of the North Fork of the Hughes River, with a lodge, cabins, campgrounds, a 305-acre lake nearby and direct access to the North Bend Rail Trail.
Ohio River Islands National Wildlife Refuge
Twenty-two islands and several mainland tracts scattered along nearly 400 river miles of the Ohio, protecting some of the last relatively undisturbed island habitat on the river — critical for freshwater mussels, migratory birds and river-bottom forest.
Mountwood Park
A county park outside Parkersburg with a 50-acre lake and one of the better mountain bike trail networks in the western half of the state, plus camping, disc golf and the site of the old Volcano oil town.
Hughes River
Three forks — North, South and Middle — draining a landscape of narrow ridges and small farms in Ritchie and Wirt counties, giving quiet Class I canoe water and good smallmouth fishing with almost no other boats.
West Virginia has roughly 1.5 million acres of public land and a handful of places that carry almost all of the attention. The consequence is that a great deal of very good ground sits nearly empty, usually for one of three reasons: nobody has heard of it, the road in is gated or rough, or it is undeveloped and has nothing to advertise. Those are the places below — of them across regions.