Fort Boreman stands on the former Mount Logan above Parkersburg, overlooking the valley at the confluence of the Little Kanawha and Ohio Rivers. Union troops built the Civil War fort in 1863 to protect the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad terminal and the valley's important commercial river facilities, and it was named for West Virginia's first governor, Parkersburg citizen Arthur I. Boreman. Union troops began occupying Parkersburg in May 1861, and soldiers from the Eighteenth Ohio Infantry soon took the hilltop because of its commanding vantage point. In 1863, two forts were planned to protect the railroad facilities at Parkersburg, one on Mount Logan and another on Prospect Hill, now Quincy Hill, but the Prospect Hill project was never finished and the fortification later known as Fort Boreman began in the summer of 1863. Although Fort Boreman never faced an eminent threat during the Civil War, a cannon exploded during a ceremonial firing in August 1863, killing one soldier and seriously injuring another. Earlier in the hill's history, timber cut from its slopes was floated across the Little Kanawha River and used to build Wood County's first official courthouse. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2003. Work on Fort Boreman Park began in 1997 after the Wood County Historical and Preservation Society met to discuss creating it, and the Society received $2,000 from the Wood County Commission to begin clearing thick brush from the hill, a task that took two years. Fort Boreman Historical Park opened to the public in 2007 as a lasting memorial to the Wood County Bicentennial Celebration of 1999, and today it includes a reconstructed Union Civil War fortification, trenches, interpretive signage, picnic shelters, a nature trail, and wide views of Parkersburg and the Ohio River.