In the late 1780s, an American speculator named Joel Barlow was sent to Paris to sell American land to French investors. The Scioto Company offered tracts along the Ohio River at attractive prices. Barlow was successful enough that several hundred French citizens - aristocrats, merchants, professionals, and craftspeople, many of them fleeing the early years of the French Revolution - paid for land and sailed for America. When they arrived at Marietta in 1790, they discovered the Scioto Company had no legal title to the land. The deeds were worthless. The settlers had crossed an ocean and had nowhere to go.

The U.S. government, fielding diplomatic complaints from France and a public relations crisis at home, agreed to provide an alternative settlement. Land at the future site of Gallipolis was acquired and laid out for the French 500. The Ohio Company of Associates built rough log houses for the new arrivals before they came down from Marietta. The settlers named their town Gallipolis - from the French Gallipoli, derived from the Latin for city of the Gauls - and tried to make a life on the frontier they had never expected to know. The setting was scenic, the Ohio River broad and quiet, but the practical challenges overwhelmed people who had no experience clearing forests or growing their own food.

Most of the original French 500 did not survive the first decade. Disease swept through the makeshift cabins. Aristocratic Parisians had not learned the kind of frontier skills the surrounding American settlers grew up with. Some went home to France when they could afford the passage. Some moved on to other American cities where their professional training might find work. Some died of typhoid, of malaria, of exposure, of the cumulative grind of survival in a place they had never imagined ending up. The settlement might have failed entirely. But a few hung on, intermarried with American settlers, established businesses, and slowly turned Gallipolis into a working river town.

By the 19th century, Gallipolis had become an Ohio River port like many others - shipping, milling, light manufacturing, the steady ebb and flow of river commerce. The county seat of Gallia County, named for the same Roman province as the town, settled into the rhythms of a small Midwestern community. Population peaked in the early 20th century and has slowly declined since to about 3,300 residents. The town sits directly across the Ohio from Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and the two communities share much of their economy and culture. The French origins survive mostly in the name, in some street layouts that hint at European city planning, and in occasional historical markers. Most visitors do not know the story until they ask. The Scioto fraud is forgotten in Paris. In Gallipolis, the town that almost was not is still there.