In 1749, French governor Pierre-Joseph Celoron de Blainville led 230 men to claim the Ohio Valley for France, burying lead plates along the Allegheny and Ohio rivers to mark territory—one at Wheeling Creek, another at the Kanawha River.

Celoron buried four plates in total, but the effort failed. France lost the Ohio Valley after the French and Indian War, ceding it in the Treaty of Paris. The Point Pleasant plate was found in 1846.