West Virginia Man Finds 253-Year-Old Fort Hidden Inside His House

A lawyer and history buff took a crowbar to his centuries-old plantation house in West Virginia and revealed a Revolutionary War-era fort hidden behind the walls.

John Bryan posted the saga of the discovery on X, formerly Twitter.

According to Bryan, historians had believed a fort known as Byrnside's Fort was on the land, but he had to buy the property before properly digging in to find out. Sure enough, once he started the demolition of the building's facade, layers of history were revealed.

Bryan carefully and painstakingly removed 1850's era plaster to uncover hand-hewn white oak logs, "in perfect condition." The house was teeming with historic relics – dolls, clothes, pictures, war memorabilia – from the past 253 years.

An avid amateur historian, Bryan bought the home in 2019 after researching frontier fort sites, he told local news outlet Mountain Messenger.

The site was registered as the Byrnside-Beirne-Johnson House in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places, described as a "pioneer log fort" built by six families, including that of American Revolution battle leader James Byrnside, in 1770.

From 1770 until 2016, the house was continuously lived in. The same family even occupied it from 1869 until 2016.

"The narrative said that supposedly, this old fort was still believed to be part of the house or in the house, and I immediately believed that was the case just by looking at it,” Bryan told Mountain Messenger.

On his viral X thread, Bryan said he thinks the structure may be the "only one left of its kind along the original Virginia frontier."

"Why did we do this and what are our plans for this place? We have no idea. We just wanted to save it," Bryan wrote on X.