Qualla: Parkersburg

Parkersburg: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tim Kiser (w:User:Malepheasant), CC BY-SA 2.5. Parkersburg was called Newport when it was first surveyed in 1773. The name changed in 1810 to honor Alexander Parker, the Pennsylvania veteran who had received the land as a grant from Virginia for his Revolutionary War service. Two centuries later, the city sits where the Little Kanawha River pours into the Ohio - 30,000 people on a bluff above the water, with the smaller Ohio town of Belpre directly across the river. The city's defining characteristic is its longstanding refusal to fit neatly into any single category. It was a petroleum town. It was a chemical-industry town. It was a regional retail center. It was the home town of a documentary filmmaker and a Republican senator and a fast-food expose. It is all of these things simultaneously, which is what makes it interesting.

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Image: Tim Kiser (w:User:Malepheasant) | CC BY-SA 2.5

Parkersburg: The Rivers

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tim Kiser (w:User:Malepheasant), CC BY-SA 2.5. Parkersburg exists because of the confluence of the Little Kanawha and the Ohio. River confluences were the most important strategic locations in pre-railroad America. Trade goods coming down the Little Kanawha from the interior of what is now West Virginia met the Ohio River sys...

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Image: Tim Kiser (w:User:Malepheasant) | CC BY-SA 2.5

Parkersburg: The Oil Town

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian M. Powell (user Bitmapped on en.wikipedia), CC BY-SA 3.0. Burning Springs, 20 miles up the Little Kanawha, was producing commercial petroleum in 1836 - a fact that complicates the conventional story that the American oil industry began with Drake's Pennsylvania well in 1859. The crude floated downstream to Parkersburg, where it was load...

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Image: Brian M. Powell (user Bitmapped on en.wikipedia) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Parkersburg: The Chemical Town

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. In the 20th century, the regional economy shifted. The petrochemical industry moved in. DuPont built a plant at Washington Works just south of the city in 1948 that became, for decades, one of the largest producers of Teflon in the United States. The plant also released, into the...

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Image: Nyttend | Public domain

Parkersburg: The Film Town

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wdzinc, CC BY-SA 3.0. Parkersburg has produced a surprising number of people connected to the film industry. Morgan Spurlock, who directed the 2004 documentary Super Size Me - the McDonald's expose that briefly made him one of the most famous documentarians in the country - was born and raised here. T...

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Image: Wdzinc | CC BY-SA 3.0

Parkersburg: Getting Around

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Josh Stapler from Charleston, United States, CC BY 2.0. Parkersburg sits on Interstate 77, the major north-south corridor between Charleston and Akron. US-50 crosses the city east-west, connecting Athens, Ohio, with Clarksburg, West Virginia. The Ohio River and the bridges to Belpre give the city a connection to Ohio that is, in every...

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Image: Josh Stapler from Charleston, United States | CC BY 2.0