Fort Randolph (West Virginia)

Fort Randolph
Point Pleasant, West Virginia
Modern replica of Fort Randolph
Coordinates	38°50′16″N 82°07′19″W / 38.83765°N 82.12202°W / 38.83765; -82.12202Coordinates: 38°50′16″N 82°07′19″W / 38.83765°N 82.12202°W / 38.83765; -82.12202
Type
Site information
Controlled by	West Virginia
Site history
Built	1776, rebuilt in 1785
In use	1776–1779; 1785–1790s
Battles/wars	Western theater of the American Revolutionary War
Garrison information
Past commanders	Matthew Arbuckle, Sr. William McKee
Garrison	100 men at full strength

Fort Randolph was an American Revolutionary War fort which stood at the confluence of the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers, on the site of present day Point Pleasant, West Virginia, USA.

Built in 1776 on the site of an earlier fort from Dunmore's War, Fort Randolph is best remembered as the place where the famous Shawnee Chief Cornstalk was murdered in 1777. The fort withstood attack by American Indians in 1778 but was abandoned the next year. It was rebuilt in the 1780s after the renewal of hostilities between the United States and American Indians, but saw little action and was eventually abandoned once again. Two centuries later, a replica of the fort has been built about a mile away.

The site where Fort Randolph was built emerged as a strategic location in the years before the American Revolution. In the Treaty of Fort Stanwix of 1768, the British acquired title to present-day West Virginia from the Iroquois. Thereafter, British colonists and land speculators began to explore the region. One of the first to do so was George Washington, a planter and politician from Virginia, who in 1770 made a long canoe trip down the Ohio River to examine the land around Point Pleasant. Many other British colonists and surveyors did the same over the next few years.

The American Indians of the Ohio Country, who hunted on the land south of the Ohio River, had not been consulted in the 1768 treaty. The eventual result was Dunmore's War in 1774, fought primarily between militia from Virginia and Shawnees and Mingos from the Ohio Country, led by Chief Cornstalk. The Battle of Point Pleasant, the only major battle of the war, was fought on the future site of Fort Randolph. After the battle, a small fort called Fort Blair was built near the battlefield. With the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War in 1775, however, Lord Dunmore, the Royal Governor of Virginia, ordered the abandonment of the fort, one of his last actions before being forced from office by the American revolutionaries.