Guide Exploring Harpers Ferry, West Virginia | SolarTravels.com

<body> Destination Guides Search for a City Destination Guides > North America > USA > Capital Region > West Virginia > Harpers Ferry Harpers Ferry Travel Options Flights Hotels Vacation Rentals Cars • Harpers Ferry · The Town • Practicalities • Explore Harpers Ferry • Hotels in Harpers Ferry HARPERS FERRY BE THERE NOW Hotels in Harpers Ferry • Comfort Inn Harpers Ferry Harpers Ferry from $72.00 USD • Comfort Inn Harpers Ferry Harpers Ferry from $72.00 USD More Hotels in Harpers Ferry >> READ IT HERE HARPERS FERRY , a ruggedly sited eighteenth-century town now restored as a national historic park, gives many visitors their first and only look at West Virginia. Clinging to steep hillsides above the rocky confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers, many of the town's forty-odd brick and stone buildings date from the days when George Washington set up the country's first national munitions factory here to arm the young Republic. During the mid-1800s Harpers Ferry was a thriving industrial complex, home to some five thousand workers and linked to the capital by the B&O Railroad and the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal. After suffering the ravages of the Civil War and a series of torrential floods, however, it was all but abandoned, the empty shells of its homes and factories slowly becoming overgrown by the dense forest that covers the surrounding hills. Almost all of Harpers Ferry has since been reconstructed as an outdoor museum, combining historical importance and natural beauty. However pretty Harpers Ferry may be - and in the fall, when the leaves blaze with color, it's hard to imagine a more picture-perfect setting - it's best known for its place in US history. The 1859 raid on its huge US arsenal by anti-slavery revolutionary John Brown , which rocked the already fragmenting nation, was the clearest foreshadowing of the Civil War, which broke out just sixteen months later. In the hope of fomenting a widespread slave revolt, Brown and twenty-one other abolitionist radicals, including two of his sons and five black men, seized the munitions factory and its large store of weapons on the night of October 16. They held out for two days before US troops, under the command of Robert E. Lee, stormed the buildings, killing many of the raiders and capturing Brown. He was taken to nearby Charles Town, put on trial just nine days later, and convicted of treason; by the time he was hanged on December 2, he was far from alone in regarding himself as a martyr to the abolitionist cause. As one of only two places in the US with the capacity to manufacture munitions, Harpers Ferry was a major prize in the Civil War, and it never got back on its feet after the resultant devastation. The arsenal buildings were burned in 1861 to keep the weapons out of Confederate hands, while in 1862 Stonewall Jackson captured the town along with 12,500 Union soldiers. Enough of the original buildings and cobbled streets survive, however, to give a good sense of how things used to be, and the restoration project has so far managed to re-create the townscape without making it feel too much like a theme park The Town Almost everyone who comes to Harpers Ferry drives. Parking is virtually banned in the old town area; shuttle buses run from the large visitor center on US-340 (visitor center and attractions open daily 8am-5pm; buses run 8am -5.45pm, 6.45pm in... Almost everyone who comes to Harpers Ferry drives. Parking is virtually banned in the old town area; shuttle buses run from the large visitor center on US-340 (visitor center and attractions open daily 8am-5pm; buses run 8am -5.45pm, 6.45pm in summer; tel 304/535-6299, ) - where you pay the $3 per person, $5 per car entry fee - to the old town, dropping off outside the old balconied Stagecoach Inn , at the end of gas-lit Shenandoah Street in the heart of the restored area; inside there's an information desk with maps and a small bookshop. Across the street, displays in the Master Armorer's House will tell you everything you want to know about gun-making; adjacent buildings include a restored blacksmith's shop, a general store and a tavern, often peopled with costumed guides who describe and act out events from the town's history. John Brown's fort - actually the armory's engine room, where he and his raiders were captured - originally stood directly across from the tavern, but was rebuilt a block away, near the point where the rivers meet. It's no more than an empty shell, however, and if you want to get the full story of the raid you'd do better to spend half an hour in the John Brown Museum opposite. Here, as throughout Harpers Ferry, debate continues to rage over Brown's sanity or sanctity; many regard him as a borderline psychotic. One monument on the wall of the building, erected by the Daughters of the Confederacy, salutes the attack's first victim, a free black railroad baggage master named Hayward Shepherd, as epitomizing the "character and faithfulness of thousands of negroes" in the old South; across from it stands another monument honoring Brown's "heroism." Other museums, housing exhibits on the Civil War and local black history, line both sides of High Street as it climbs away from the river. At one point, a set of stone steps ascends between them through the residential area, to the 1782 Harper House , preserved as a typical worker's rooming house of the period. A footpath continues uphill, past overgrown churchyards hemmed in by dry-stone walls, to Jefferson Rock , a huge gray boulder affording a great view over the two rivers; Thomas Jefferson said the vista was worth a voyage across the Atlantic. For a longer hike, two trails lead onwards into the surrounding forest: the Appalachian Trail continues from Jefferson Rock across the Shenandoah River into the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, while the Maryland Heights Trail makes a four-mile round-trip around the headlands across the Potomac River. You can also float down the river in a raft or inner-tube provided by one of the many outfitters along the rivers east and south of town. </body>