12/23/2023 0 Comments Jefferson county parcel search![]() Traveling through Maryland on his way to the Shenandoah Valley, Harper, who was also a millwright, realized the potential of the latent waterpower from the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers, at an easily accessible location. Since he was a builder, Harper was asked by a group of Quakers in 1747 to build a meeting house in the Shenandoah Valley, near the present site of Winchester, Virginia. Robert Harper, from whom the town takes its name, was born in 1718 in Oxford Township, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Two other National Register of Historic Places properties adjoin the town: the B & O Railroad Potomac River Crossing and St. Most of the remainder, which includes the more elevated populated area, is included in the separate Harpers Ferry Historic District. It is surrounded by higher ground, and since the 20th century has been part of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. The town's original, lower section is on a flood plain created by the two rivers. : 67 A newer Bollman truss bridge, which carried both rail and highway traffic, opened in 1870. In 1851, a second bridge was built, across the Shenandoah, one of the earliest Bollman trusses. None of Washington D.C.'s bridges connecting it with Virginia carried more than horse traffic until after the Civil War. Harpers Ferry was the site of the first and for many years the only railroad bridge across the Potomac River, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad's bridge, built in 1836–37. The ferry ended in 1824, when a covered wooden road bridge, Wager's Bridge, was built. The Arsenal, and later other industries, were located in Harpers Ferry because of the abundant water power available from the rivers. Essential telegraph lines passed through the town. The first railroad junction in the United States was at Harpers Ferry. The rivers' valleys made it possible to build the never-completed Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, and then the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and shortly after the Winchester and Potomac Railroad. ![]() It guarded the entrance to Virginia's large Shenandoah Valley, and the Potomac provided easy access to Washington. A major river, the Shenandoah, joins the Potomac River at Harpers Ferry. The geographical and physical features of Harpers Ferry were the principal reasons for its settlement and eventual industrial development. : 15 "The fact that Harpers Ferry was first and foremost an industrial village during the 19th century is not apparent in the sights, sounds or smells of the town today." : 10Ģ016 US Mint Harpers Ferry (John Brown's Fort) quarter It was in ruins at the end of the Civil War, not helped by river flooding. The lower town has been reconstructed by the National Park Service. The National Park Service is in the 21st century Harpers Ferry's largest employer. The headquarters of the Appalachian Trail are there-not the midpoint, but close to it, and easily accessible-and the buildings of the former Storer College are used by the National Park Service for one of its four national training centers. John Brown's Fort is the most visited tourist site in the state of West Virginia. The main economic activity in the town in the 20th and 21st centuries is tourism. (See Virginius Island and Harpers Ferry Armory.) Prior to the Civil War, Harpers Ferry was a manufacturing town, as well as a transportation hub. īy far, the most important event in the town's history was John Brown's raid on the Harpers Ferry Armory in 1859. The United States Board on Geographic Names, whose Domestic Name Committee is reluctant to include apostrophes in official place names, established the standard spelling of "Harpers Ferry" by 1891. The town was formerly spelled Harper's Ferry with an apostrophe-in the 18th century, it was the site of a ferry service owned and operated by Robert Harper. It has been called "the best strategic point in the whole South". It is the easternmost town in West Virginia and during the Civil War was the northernmost point of Confederate-controlled territory. states of Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia meet. It is situated at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers, where the U.S. The population was 285 at the 2020 census. Harpers Ferry is a historic town in Jefferson County, West Virginia, United States, in the lower Shenandoah Valley. See also: Harpers Ferry Historic District and Harpers Ferry National Historical Park
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