|
|
The small and picturesque Harpers Ferry area has served in a
pivotal role in several events that impacted the nation's history.
Harpers Ferry and Bolivar are wedged between the Potomac and
Shenandoah rivers and bounded on the west by Bolivar Heights. Not
long after the descendants of Europeans pushed their way through
the Harpers Ferry Gap, it became apparent that this site was no
ordinary place.
Robert Harper, a Philadelphia builder, gave the community its
name. He settled there sometime between 1734 and 1747. He also
experienced in 1748 the bane of the ferry's very existence --
flooding on the two rivers.
In 1761, Harper established a ferry across the Potomac, making
this community a major jumping off point for settlers seeking new
lands in the Shenandoah Valley and points west. Over the next 30
years, he also built a grist mill on the Shenandoah River and the
huge stone house that bears his name.
An early visitor who appreciated the ferry's potential was none
other than George Washington. After he was elected president, he
arranged to have one of the country's two arsenals located there.
In the years to come, the Harpers Ferry Arsenal made high quality,
rifled muskets and engaged in what we now call research and
development.
The location of the arsenal eventually attracted other industrial
development. Perhaps the most significant from a technological
point of view was the Hall Rifle Works. Created by John R. Hall,
this plant used the concept of interchangeable parts to produce
breech-loading rifles.
This industrial development spurred more commercial and retail
development. That was enhanced even more when the Chesapeake and
Ohio Canal reached the ferry in 1833. Situated on the Maryland
side of the river, the canal connected the ferry with markets in
Washington, D.C.
A year later, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad arrived and with
it the final piece in a political-economic network that made
Harpers Ferry and the recently founded community of Bolivar
important to the nation's future.
How important became very clear when abolitionist John Brown
seized the armory and arsenal on October 16, 1859. He saw the
ferry as the place to capture arms with which to equip an army and
free the slaves of the Deep South. Brown's raid was a failure, but
it set the country in motion toward civil war.
Within hours after Confederates fired on Fort Sumter on April 12,
1861, in Charleston, South Carolina, Virginia authorities moved to
capture Harpers Ferry. They wanted its arms and they wanted to
control the railroad and canal. The federals also recognized
Harpers Ferry's strategic importance -- whoever controlled the
ferry controlled the B&O railroad, one of the three most
important east-west transportation corridors in the North.
In the years that followed, Harpers Ferry was devastated by
warring parties. The armory and arsenal were destroyed, its
railroad bridges over the Potomac burned and later rebuilt.
Usually occupied by Federal troops, it also became a refugee camp
for thousands of runaway slaves making their way North.
Confederate General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson
captured the federal garrison there on September 15, 1862,
following a lightning 51-mile march. He bagged thousands of troops
and tons of supplies, not to mention hundreds of Black people who
were marched South back into slavery.
After the war, the ferry was little more than a ghost town. The
federal government sold what was left of the armory and arsenal
and other property. Efforts to rebuild its commercial base were
frequently devastated by record-breaking floods.
But out of the ashes came two occurrences that impacted the
country's future. The first was a small, church-owned school for
African-Americans, Storer College. In the 1890s, civil rights
leaders convened there in their effort to create a new, national
organization that would fight for the rights of blacks. That
movement eventually led to the creation of the NAACP.
The lower town was little more than a shell in these years, but
the upper town profited from a growing tourism business. At the
turn of the century, as many as 28 trains a day came to the ferry
and visitors flocked to the high-and-dry Hilltop House.
What the federal government all but abandoned in the 1860s, it
began to reclaim during World War II when the community was
declared a national monument. That action eventually led to the
creation of the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park.
Since the 1950s, the National Park Service has tried to
rehabilitate and restore the town while at the same time interpret
its historical importance to the nearly 2 million people who visit
it each year.
Lodging: Surrounding
Area of Harpers Ferry |
