Fort Ashby, WV

Fort Ashby is a Mineral County census-designated place along Patterson Creek, named for the frontier fort built here in the fall of 1755. George Washington ordered the fort as part of a defensive line during the French and Indian War; a Virginia Regiment company led by Captain John Ashby built it on John Sellers's farm. The site was abandoned by the Virginia Regiment in 1757, but the old fort name stayed attached to the hamlet. An old log building at the site is operated part-time as a museum, and Friends of Ashby's Fort works to preserve the place and interpret the frontier history around it. Fort Ashby is also home to the Mineral County Fair, which brings a current county gathering to the same community named for an eighteenth-century outpost. Patterson Creek, the fort grounds, and the fairgrounds make the place easier to understand than the CDP label alone.