PARKERSBURG, W.Va. — As darkness falls over the Ohio River, a sternwheeler departs from the Ohio shore, carrying passengers toward a West Virginia island lit by hundreds of candles and lanterns.
For two nights this October, visitors to Blennerhassett Island Historical State Park will step off the Island Belle into a landscape of period music, dancing, and storytelling around a mansion linked to one of the strangest political episodes in early American history.
“You arrive at the island, and it’s lit only by candles, and it’s really just a magical experience,” said Autumn Henthorn, director of operations and marketing for the Greater Parkersburg Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Mansion by Candlelight will return Oct. 9–10, and demand is already evident. Last year’s event sold out completely, Henthorn said. Two scheduled 2026 departure times have already sold out more than six weeks before the event.
A different way to experience Blennerhassett Island
The annual event begins aboard the Island Belle, though visitors depart from Civitan Park in Belpre, Ohio, rather than the sternwheeler’s usual departure point at Point Park in Parkersburg.
Henthorn said the shorter crossing from Belpre allows organizers to move more visitors to and from the island during the limited nighttime hours.
Once ashore, visitors encounter a version of Blennerhassett markedly different from its usual daytime appearance.
“Of course, the candles and nighttime just make the island look magical,” Henthorn told West Virginia Explorer. “But they have live entertainment, people dancing inside the mansion, music, and storytelling.”
West Virginia State Parks officials say attendants in period costume, traditional dance performances, Appalachian music, and local folklore help evoke the era when Harman and Margaret Blennerhassett entertained guests at their elaborate Ohio River estate.
Visitors also receive a guided tour of the mansion and a horse-drawn wagon ride. An optional Harvest Supper is available by advance reservation, with dinner served shortly after participating visitors arrive on the island.
An island tied to Aaron Burr—and Hamilton
For all its romance, the island was once caught up in a national political crisis.
“The island is our number one tourist attraction,” Henthorn said. “That is why so many people come to our area — to experience the island.”
Yet Henthorn believes even people who live in the region often don’t realize the importance of what happened there.
“I don’t think people local to Parkersburg or the region realize the significance that the interaction with Aaron Burr had on the forming of our nation,” she said. “And I really don’t think people realize the tie-in to Hamilton.”
The connection was Burr himself. The Aaron Burr who arrived in the Ohio Valley was the same former vice president whose duel with Alexander Hamilton had shocked the nation only a year earlier. Burr fatally shot Hamilton in Weehawken, New Jersey, on July 11, 1804.
By the following year, Burr was traveling through the Ohio Valley and had become acquainted with Harman Blennerhassett, a wealthy and highly educated Irish expatriate who had established an extraordinary estate on an island near what is now Parkersburg.
According to the West Virginia Encyclopedia, Blennerhassett became one of Burr’s financial supporters and allowed his island estate to serve as a base for Burr’s mysterious planned expedition into the Southwest.
Exactly what Burr intended remains debated more than two centuries later.
The West Virginia Encyclopedia notes that historians have questioned whether the enterprise was intended to seize Spanish-controlled territory or, as Burr’s opponents alleged, to separate western territory from the United States. President Thomas Jefferson ordered the arrest of Burr and Blennerhassett in late 1806 on treason charges.
The Library of Congress preserves extensive records related to the affair, including correspondence sent to Jefferson and James Madison concerning Burr’s activities, his association with Blennerhassett, and the treason proceedings that followed.
Burr was ultimately acquitted. Blennerhassett, also indicted, was released after prosecutors failed to convict Burr.
The affair nevertheless destroyed the Blennerhassetts’ life on the island and permanently linked their home to one of the early republic’s most enduring political mysteries.
A mansion on the edge of the American West
The setting makes the story even more remarkable.
When Harman and Margaret Blennerhassett settled on the island in 1798, the Ohio River was one of the great corridors into the young nation’s western frontier. Marietta, immediately across the river in what is now Ohio, had been established only a decade earlier as one of the first permanent American settlements in the Northwest Territory.
Into that landscape, the Blennerhassetts built an estate dramatically unlike the frontier settlements surrounding it.
According to historian Ray Swick’s account in the West Virginia Encyclopedia, Harman Blennerhassett was born into a wealthy Irish family, studied at Westminster School and Trinity College Dublin, and trained in law in London and Dublin. He also joined the Society of United Irishmen before leaving Europe for America with Margaret.
Their enormous Palladian-style mansion was completed in 1800, furnished with imported goods, and surrounded by landscaped grounds and gardens. Swick says the estate became renowned as one of the most beautiful homes in the American West.
For travelers moving through a sparsely settled Ohio Valley, the elaborate island estate must have presented a striking contrast to the surrounding frontier.
Margaret Blennerhassett’s remarkable life
Margaret was far more than the mistress of the estate. Historian Debra Conner in the West Virginia Encyclopedia describes Margaret Blennerhassett as a poet, musician, accomplished horsewoman, and hostess who entertained guests with music and dancing, French readings, and Shakespeare performances.
But one episode from 1805 stands out. Margaret returned from Philadelphia with the smallpox vaccine and inoculated not only her own children but also children from neighboring families. The episode occurred during the same period when the Blennerhassetts’ lives were about to become entangled with Burr.
Within little more than a year, their extraordinary life on the island had collapsed.
Henthorn said visitors often begin to appreciate the larger story only after reaching Blennerhassett and hearing its history.
“They’re kind of like, ‘Oh, okay, there is that connection,’” she said.
The mansion visitors see today rose again
The mansion standing on Blennerhassett Island today is not the building Harman and Margaret once occupied.
After the family fled amid the Burr affair, their estate passed into other hands. The original mansion burned in 1811, leaving the celebrated island home to disappear for more than a century and a half.
Archaeological excavations in the 1970s uncovered the mansion’s foundations and helped clarify details of the original structure. The mansion was subsequently reconstructed on its historic site, allowing visitors to once again experience the scale and setting of the Blennerhassetts’ unusual island estate.
Today’s Mansion by Candlelight is not held in a surviving 18th-century building. Instead, visitors walk through a recreation built where the original mansion stood, on the same island landscape where the Blennerhassetts entertained guests and where the Burr affair unfolded.
A story that still brings travelers to the Ohio Valley
The history still draws visitors more than two centuries later.
Henthorn said the Greater Parkersburg CVB saw a substantial increase in visitors after the publication of historian David McCullough’s 2019 book The Pioneers, which chronicles early American settlement of the Northwest Territory and focuses heavily on nearby Marietta.
“We had a ton of people come here after reading it,” she said.
For the Parkersburg area, that history has become part of the region’s tourism identity. Blennerhassett Island’s unusual combination of river travel, early American history, and isolation makes it an attraction difficult to replicate elsewhere.
Mansion by Candlelight condenses much of that experience into an autumn evening.
“Mansion by Candlelight offers visitors a rare opportunity to step directly into West Virginia’s rich history,” Acting West Virginia State Parks Chief Dillard Price said when announcing the event.
“From the sternwheeler ride across the river to their arrival on an island illuminated by the warm glow of lanterns, guests will enjoy an enchanting and memorable evening.”
How to attend Mansion by Candlelight
Mansion by Candlelight will be held Friday and Saturday, Oct. 9–10, 2026, at Blennerhassett Island Historical State Park.
General admission is $42 for adults and $32 for children ages 4–12. Children 3 and younger are admitted free. Admission includes round-trip transportation aboard the Island Belle, a horse-drawn wagon ride, and a guided mansion tour.
The optional Harvest Supper costs an additional $25 for adults and $15 for children ages 4–12; advance reservations are required. Children 3 and younger eat free.
The Island Belle will depart from Civitan Park in Belpre at 6, 6:30, 7, 7:30, and 8 p.m. Return trips from the island are scheduled for 8:30, 9, 9:30, 10, and 10:30 p.m.
Harvest Supper seatings are scheduled for 6:15, 6:45, 7:15, 7:45, and 8:15 p.m.
West Virginia State Parks says the event will be held rain or shine. Tickets are available through the state park system, though two departure times were already sold out as of Thursday morning.
For two nights in October, visitors will again approach the island as travelers have for centuries—from the Ohio River. Beyond the dark shoreline lies the site of an extraordinary frontier estate, a family ruined by political intrigue, and a chapter of American history that transformed this quiet island into a place remembered more than 200 years later.