Marietta — Ohio's Oldest City on the River

Campus Martius tells the story of the Northwest Territory from the exact ground where it began: the museum is built over the site of the original 1788 fortified settlement, and it preserves within its walls the actual Ohio Company Land Office and the Rufus Putnam house, the oldest residence in Ohio. Exhibits trace the arrival of the New England pioneers who founded Marietta as the first organized American settlement northwest of the Ohio River, the terms of the Northwest Ordinance that shaped every state to follow, and the westward migration that flowed through the town. Original furnishings, surveying tools, and family artifacts make the founding tangible. It is the single best introduction to why Marietta matters, and the right first stop of the trip.

A relaxed lunch in Marietta's historic downtown, the Marietta Brewing Company pours house beers in a restored brick storefront on Front Street and serves burgers, sandwiches, and pub fare a short walk from the riverfront. The dining room's exposed brick and tin ceiling suit the town's nineteenth-century character. It is an easy, central place to refuel between the morning's founding history and the afternoon at the river museum.

On the bank of the Muskingum near its mouth, the Ohio River Museum celebrates the age of steamboats that turned Marietta and the inland rivers into the highways of a growing nation. Three exhibit buildings cover the natural history of the Ohio, the golden era of the sternwheel packet, and the shipbuilding that flourished here. The centerpiece is moored outside: the W.P. Snyder Jr., a genuine steam-powered sternwheel towboat and the last of its kind in America, which visitors can board and explore. Models, whistles, pilothouse fittings, and salvaged hulls fill out a collection that makes the river's working past vivid. Time the visit for late afternoon light on the water.

Reached only by a sternwheel riverboat from the Parkersburg landing, Blennerhassett Island sits in the middle of the Ohio River and holds one of the strangest stories in early American history. Here, in 1798, the Irish aristocrat Harman Blennerhassett and his wife Margaret built a lavish Palladian mansion and gardens — a wilderness estate of extraordinary refinement — only to be drawn into Aaron Burr's shadowy 1806 conspiracy to raise a private army and carve an empire out of the western territories. The scheme collapsed, the Blennerhassetts were ruined, and the original house later burned. The mansion visitors tour today is a meticulous reconstruction on the original foundations, furnished to its Federal-era grandeur, with horse-drawn wagon tours of the wooded island. Confirm the boat schedule before setting out, as crossings are seasonal.

Marietta wears its steamboat heritage on its sleeve, and the riverfront is where the town gathers. The Ohio River levee and Sternwheeler Park look out on the water where paddlewheel boats still moor, and each September the town fills with them for the beloved Ohio River Sternwheel Festival. Behind the levee, Front Street and the surrounding historic district hold antique shops, galleries, the 1918 Hippodrome/Colony Theatre, and blocks of preserved nineteenth-century commercial buildings. An unhurried afternoon walk along the two rivers and through the brick streets is the perfect coda before the drive home — watch for the trolley tours if you want the founding stories one more time.