All Invited To Fort Warwick Archeological Dig 

One weekend, every spring and fall, landowners, historians and archaeologists join in opening up the Pocahontas County site of the pre-revolutionary war Fort Warwick to the public. On that Friday, buses full of students run through the trench filled grounds. On Saturday, adult volunteers are invited to come dig in the dirt for artifacts.

On a recent spring Saturday, Randy Yohe’s ancestry-loving wife Vickie brought her gloves and kneeler to help unearth some West Virginia History. She brought Randy along as well. 

A colonial fife and drum corps, consisting of one fifer and one drummer, serenades every volunteer and visitor who enters the Fort Warwick archaeological site. When he’s not part of the entourage here, former Colonial Williamsburg fife and drum corps member Paul Vosteen works at the nearby Green Bank Radio observatory. Vosteen said one mid-1700’s tune they played was the Fort Warwick militia march.

“Colonel [Andrew] Lewis came over from Augusta County with his militia and joined up with the smaller militia here before they marched onto Point Pleasant,” Vosteen said. “We know from documented evidence that the tune you just heard ‘Over the hills, and far away,’ was their march.”

Once visitors enter the the roughly football field-sized site, the sounds of trowels and shovels mix in with the mountain wind and varied conversations. Veteran archaeologists Kim and Steven McBride have worked the Fort Warwick site since 1990. Kim explained that Warwick was one of several Greenbrier and Pocahontas County forts built to protect the early pioneers.

“1774 was the peak of hostility, a series of conflicts between the settlers and the Native Americans called Lord Dunmore’s War,” McBride said. “And that’s when most of these frontier forts were built. The colonial government really relied on these militia to hold the frontier, because if they didn’t hold the frontier, then the colonial government was going to have to send troops, and the settlers were threatening to go back east.” 

Dressed in colonial garb to greet visitors, landowner Bob Sheets has turned a horse and maple syrup farm into a historic agritourism destination. When Sheets discovered the scope of what was buried under the grass field that once contained Fort Warwick, he said “Let’s dig.” 

“It’s a site that doesn’t impact our farming operation,” Sheets said. “And of course, it’s part of my family, because William Warwick is my fifth great grandfather. And so when we’re finding these things. They may have actually been, you know, family artifacts and such.”

Immersed in sifting through dirt to find little 250-year-old pieces of pottery and pipes, Vickie Yohe had already Googled and grasped much of Fort Warwick’s history. But she said that becoming part of the archaeological team was a dream come true. 

“It’s a beautiful day, and I get to dig in the dirt and possibly find some little pieces of history,” she said. “Which is pretty fascinating, even if it’s just a piece of flint or a new word I learned today, chert, a piece of chert. I found a lot of those, and you get to spend time with people who have the same passion about finding and learning about the history of this place, Fort Warwick. They brought metal detectors out first, and they found forged nails. So then they started the search, and then they could find outlines of a stockade and a tower and the fire pit and the place where they kept the ammunition. So it’s just ongoing, and they’re finding more and more. It’s pretty exciting,” 

Kim McBride said that she relished in showing Vickie some of the most notable unearthed artifacts.

“We have military artifacts, like the side plate from a gun,” McBride said. “We have a trigger guard that we found last year. We have lots of musket balls, both dropped and fired. We have domestic artifacts like ceramics and bottle glass. You do get a lot of broken buckles because the clothing back then, you know, no zippers.”

Volunteer Kathy Miller said she makes a twice a year trek from her Indiana home to dig in Fort Warwick dirt. 

“It’s verifying history or finding out what’s missing that we didn’t know,” Miller said. “For me, on a personal level, I had ancestors who were at some of these forts in West Virginia. So when I get to dig at a West Virginia frontier fort, I think, well, my ancestors, my direct ancestors, probably passed through right here.”

Fort Warwick neighbor Tim Henry is a perennial volunteer. Henry said he loves to see area students get down and dirty with history.  

“Some of the students here are related, like, I’m gonna guess fifth or sixth or seventh generations to the very people that helped build this, supply it, maybe staff it,” Henry said. “They were protected by it. Some of those kids, I guess their eyes get pretty wide when they see their ancestors name on a bill of sale for five barrels of flour that were sold to the militiamen here.” 

In fact, nine-year-old Ava Frayer joined Vickie and others at one of the dirt screening stations. Ava talked about finding history here, instead of the classroom.

“In a book, if they don’t have a picture, it’s really, you’re just thinking about it. And out here, you actually can look for it, and you can find it, and you can actually see how it looks if it doesn’t have a picture,” she said.

As another group of visitors were heralded on to the site, Bob Sheets noted that the politics of Fort Warwick 1774 don’t contrast, but compare to politics today, 2025. 

“We’re looking at what we consider to be divisiveness,” Sheets said. “I think it’s important we understand that it’s not something that’s brand new. In 1774, as they’re building this, they’re loyalists. They are loyal to King George the Third, but in 1775, 1776, they’ve switched Georges. They’ve gone to George Washington and were involved in that particular conflict. So America has a long history of that.”

The end of the American Revolution marked the end of a need for the frontier forts like Warwick. Two and a half centuries later, the remains of that “birth of America” time create a need for knowledge and remembrance.