historic fort steuben

It's nice to see that one improvement to this city over the years was the construction of the Fort Steuben. Here you can come and view the city's history back 1787. During the summer the entire fort is open to the public. The visitor section and Museum is open all year long. It's the one thing that brings a small spark to downtown Steubenville.The Staff during the season are very respectable and very knowledgeable. I would recommend a guided tour for the family if you're new to the area. There are candle making and tin making classes for the children. Also if you're there at the right time, check out the fort Steuben Summer Concerts that are free to the public. We personally enjoyed a few jazz bands when we where there. The entire area is very handicap accessible as well.

Let me start by saying that Fort Steuben is worth one visit. It's only five bucks. But we left shaking our heads. Three things caused the head-shaking:1) In the lobby, we found wonderful prints of night life in Steubenville (by an artist named David Barnhouse). A docent wandered over, chatted with us briefly about Steubenville's glory days, and then said: "Oh, well. It's all in the past. Forget about it. On to the future, I guess." We found that extraordinarily odd for an historian to say, especially since we were there to learn about the past.2) The main indoor museum (one large room) has remarkably little to say about Fort Steuben itself. We found quite a few interpretive signs stacked against the wall on one side of the room that would help a lot, but other sorts of history are displayed instead. We're willing to take time and read everything presented, but this was such a jumble that we finally gave up and went outside to the fort.3) The fort itself needs work. I don't want to be too critical; a lot of effort has gone into this place. But there are maintenance issues, more interpretive signage issues, and customer service issues galore. If you're a couple, it's worth the $10. If I had a young family, I wouldn't take them there. It's too confusing to try to sort everything out and help young people understand what happened there.On the up side, there is a nice outdoor amphitheatre for concerts and presentations. It's impressive and fairly new. On the down side, it was about 12 noon on a July Sunday (prime tourist time) and there were only 2 other visitors on the grounds. Yikes.

The museum docent set a context for this rendition of the actual fort that seemed very one-sided. His interpretation of its significance was that U.S. soldiers guarded surveyors from attacks by unreasonably savage Native Americans. Surely, today we read history more critically and understand the story of western movement included dramatic displacement and disinheritance of American tribes.

When my 9 year old and I arrived at Fort Steuben there was a large group of motorcyclists already taking a tour of the fort and we were told it would be about 45 minutes before the next tour started. We decided not to wait but to take the self tour and I think we missed out on a lot of the history because as we walked around the 8 buildings of the fort, the tour guide for the motorcyclists opened the large gate at the side of the fort and let that group go outside but when we got to the gate, it was locked and we didn't get to go out. There are about 8 buildings to tour and 3 additional buildings that were locked. We walked through them and looked at everything, but without a historical significance behind them, they're just artifacts and displays. The best part of the entire tour was putting my daughter into the stockade and taking a picture of her. Of course she enjoyed doing the same to me. I don't think I'd recommend this to families with really small children because my 9 year old was wanting to just go in and out of the buildings, look at the stuff and leave.

This is a rebuilt replica of the original fort from 1789 to protect the surveyors of the Northwest Territory from Indians. For a 5$ donation you get a guided tour of how the fort was manned. It is very much worth it and to find how Steubenville got it's name.

was waisting time and happened too go and check it out. i hadn't been there in the area in years and was checking it out and it was nice too see it being viewed by many people.

The exhibits in the fort area (which are outdoors for the most part) are informative and show what life was like at the fort. However, on the day we visited, there were no docents/staff in the entire fort area or any other visitors in the fort area for that matter. It was a little creepy! Overall it was OK, but one visit is enough. Not a place you'll visit again and again.