Stonewall Jackson Lake itself is an Army Corps of Engineers impoundment of the West Fork River, completed in 1988 primarily for flood control. The West Fork rises in central West Virginia and flows north to join the Tygart Valley River at Fairmont, forming the Monongahela; before the dam, it flooded Weston and the towns downstream with regularity. The reservoir behind the dam covers thousands of acres in Lewis County, with long narrow arms reaching back into wooded hollows. The state park was established along its shores in 1990 to take advantage of the new recreational opportunities, but the park-as-built was a fairly modest affair - a campground, a marina, a multi-purpose building, and the offices of the park staff. The dam paid for itself in flood-control savings; the park did not.

Robert Byrd represented West Virginia in the Senate for fifty-one years, longer than any other senator in American history, and during that time he became famous for his ability to direct federal dollars and federal solutions to his home state. The Stonewall debt was a textbook Byrd intervention. He drafted legislation that allowed West Virginia to avoid paying the $28 million owed to the Corps - on the condition that the state invested an equivalent amount in improving the park. The math was political: federal forgiveness in exchange for state-stimulated economic development in a county that needed it. The legislation passed. The state was now obligated to spend money it didn't have on a park that wasn't paying for itself.

The state's solution was to find a private partner. McCabe-Henley Properties of Charleston agreed to develop a full-service resort on the park grounds. Through a bond-issuing arrangement, McCabe-Henley raised $44 million from private investors; the state contributed $10 million; the total $54 million pool funded construction of the lodge, the golf course, the cottages, the conference facilities, and the supporting infrastructure. Benchmark Hospitality International was brought in to operate the resort. The legal name of the park remained Stonewall Jackson Lake State Park, but for marketing purposes the new development was - and is - called Stonewall Resort. The arrangement was unusual for any state park system and innovative for West Virginia. It was also, by most measures, successful: the lodge opened in 2002 and quickly drew the kind of clientele the state had hoped for.

The headline amenity is the Arnold Palmer Signature Golf Course, designed by Palmer himself and routed across the wooded ridges overlooking the reservoir. It opened in 2002 and was named the second-best new course in America by Golf Digest in 2003, the number-eight new course of 2005 by Golfweek, and one of Golf Magazine's Top Ten You Can Play in 2002. Golfweek later named it one of America's top 100 resort courses three years running, from 2006 through 2008. The course's setting - holes that climb up and down the ridges, water views from many tees - gives it visual character that compensates for the relative remoteness of central West Virginia from the major golf markets. Palmer was 72 when the course opened and had designed dozens of courses across his post-playing career; Stonewall was among the more dramatic landscapes he had to work with.

The resort is what marketing language calls a destination. There are three restaurants - Stillwaters, TJ Muskies, and Lightburns - all named for local references; the 18-hole golf course and driving range; sixteen conference rooms totaling 15,000 square feet; an indoor and an outdoor swimming pool; a full-service spa and a fitness center; hiking and mountain biking trails through the park's wooded sections; fishing and boating in the reservoir; a marina with rentals and a 125-passenger cruise boat; eighteen cottages; 191 guest rooms and suites in the main lodge; and the original 40 campsites from the 1990 park, still available for visitors who prefer their state park experience without the four-diamond hotel. AAA awarded the resort its Four Diamond rating from 2004 through 2008. The lake is three miles off Exit 91 of Interstate 79, about ten miles south of Weston and seventy miles south of Pittsburgh.