A new structure is planned for Morgantown’s Wharf District near the Monongahela River.
Alongside restaurants, law offices, the Waterfront Place Hotel and the city’s riverfront park will be built an 18th century flatboat replica.
When Morgantown was a small frontier town in the 1700s, Michael Kerns, the city’s earliest entrepreneur, ran a boatyard near Deckers Creek, which flows into the Monongahela in the Wharf District. He built flatboats for pioneers going west and for farmers who wanted to sell their goods down river. These boats were box-shaped craft that often ended up as lumber for pioneers’ houses after they had made the trip down to the Ohio River and sometimes to the Mississippi and as far as New Orleans.
The project began with the opening of an exhibit at the Morgantown History Museum on Dec. 15, 2012, which will run through the spring.
Planners, including the city’s parks department, hope the boat will become an educational outreach center for the museum and a tourist attraction for visitors to Morgantown.
“Carpenters in period costume will build the boat with tools that workers in the Kerns boatyard would have used,” said Pamela Ball, chair of the Morgantown History Commission. “This may take longer, but it will enable us to tell the history of Morgan’s Town, the original name, and to involve more of the community.”
The group is raising money for the project and working on plans for the boat, which will be about 30 feet long and 12 feet wide. For information, call (304) 319-1800.
