Harper’s Ferry West Virginia

…continuing with our August 2018 exploration of parts of the northeastern United States. 

It was the afternoon of the twentieth day of our trip and we’d just finished touring the Antietam National Battlefield across the Potomac River in Maryland.  With truly hot weather at Antietam, (99 F), we had done most of that tour from the cool comfort of our car.

The next attraction did require getting out and about a bit on foot…

We crossed the Potomac River into West Virginia and we arrived at the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park.  The Park and the town of Harpers Ferry West Virginia are located at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers.  The Park is managed by the National Park Service.  It had initially been declared a National Monument in 1944, but in 1963 it was designated as a National Historical Park. 

This is Shenandoah Street in the lower part of Harpers Ferry.  This street in “Lower Town” runs parallel to the Shenandoah River and it is all National Park Service land.  Do you notice anything unexpected?  Where are the tourists?  It was hot but bearable, especially if you explored inside the various buildings.  It was a Tuesday as well.  During our visit, I don’t believe that we saw more than a couple dozen tourists...

The Park recorded 331,691 visitors in 2016.  How they arrived at the number is somewhat of a mystery to me.  We didn’t have to pay an entrance fee and if we hadn’t stopped by the Visitor’s Center in the Lower Town, we wouldn’t have been anywhere where we could have been recorded.

The Harpers Ferry Park Association and National Park Bookshop are housed in the John G. Wilson Building which is also known as the Stagecoach Inn.  When it was built in 1826, it contained both stores and residences.  In the 1830s, it served as a hotel.  After the Harpers Ferry U.S. Armory was built, this building housed workers for the factory. 

Today, this building is a bookstore as well as offices for the Harpers Ferry Park Association, a non-profit organization that supports the Park and the National Park Service.  Proceeds from sales go to support educational and interpretive programs in the Park.

FYI, we’d parked in the almost empty Visitor’s Center Parking Lot which is some distance from the Lower Town area.  We took an almost empty shuttle bus to the Lower Town.  The Visitor’s Center by the parking lot was closed… As it turned out, we could have easily parked down by the main attractions along the river.      

I couldn’t determine when this building was completed but it’s safe to assume that it was built before the American Civil War.  The building has several signs on it, most prominent of which is “Stonebraker’s Bakery.  In reality, it is home to public restrooms and the Park’s Industry Museum.

As the sign in this photo showing a small part of the Industry Museum states, the gun manufacturing operation in Harpers Ferry made the whole weapon…”lock, stock and barrel’.

George Washington visited the area in 1785 to determine the need for bypass canals along the Potomac River.  In 1794, he proposed the site for a new United States armory and arsenal.  By the mid-1800s, Armory workers had invented the Minie Rifle bullet, special machinery and interchangeable parts for the rifles.  As Civil War approached the fact that the Harpers Ferry Armory and Arsenal were the only National armory south of the Mason-Dixon Line made the town a valuable and strategic target for both Union and Confederate forces. 

Note: Meriwether Lewis visited Harpers Ferry in 1903 to buy rifles and tomahawks for his expedition west.

We loved this random stone pattern in the streets of the Lower Town…

In 1733 a squatter settled on the land near the point where the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers meet.  He established a ferry service across the Potomac from what is now West Virginia to Maryland.  In 1747, Robert Harper passed through the area and, given the area’s water power, he recognized its potential for industry.  He ‘bought’ the land from the squatter and then in 1751, he gained legal title to the area by purchasing 126 acres from its rightful owner, Lord Fairfax.  Then he ‘established’ a ferry…although one had been operating for years.  Although Harper and his heirs sold land to the government for the armory in 1796, they held on to key portions of Harper Ferry’s Lower Town…which became the commercial heart of the town.

Before the approaching American Civil War, Harpers Ferry was a thriving industrial and commercial town of about 3,000 residents.  It was linked to major cities via a system of railroads, canals and highways.  Over 40 stores in town served workers, businessmen, housewives, farmers and tradesmen.  

Despite the fact that the town was in a slave state, (Virginia at the time), whites and African-Americans, slave and free, shopped in these stores together.

The merchandise on display in the Dry Goods Store shown above were typical of the items carried in the 1850s.  They include fabrics, patent medicines, writing implements, hardware items and general notions. 

This is the Provost Marshal Office in Lower Town at Harpers Ferry.  Items and furnishings on display are typical of what one might expect in this office.  Rifles, guard uniforms, a drum, U.S. Flag, a status chalk board tracking the status of prisoners…and of course, the clerk’s desk…where all the work really took place.

The pair of 1806 Harpers Ferry pistols became the insignia of the U.S. Military Police Corps in 1923.

The Provost Marshal was frequently the most important and powerful man in town during the Civil War.  These Union Army Officers were charged with maintaining order among both soldiers and civilians.  They were the Union’s military police.  They hunted and arrested deserters, spies and civilians suspected of disloyalty.  They served as judge, jailer and sometimes, executioner. 

Note:

•          During the Civil War, Harpers Ferry was the northernmost point of Confederate controlled territory.  Harpers Ferry is the site of the first and for many years the only railroad bridge across the Potomac River.  The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad completed their bridge in 1837.  This was also the site of the first railroad intersection in the USA.  Amazingly, at the time of the Civil War, this was the only railroad link between the Northern and Southern states.  One of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson’s first actions was the Great Train Raid of 1861.  His forces disabled the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad for almost a year by destroying tracks, bridges, water towers, coal depots and by stealing rolling stock.   

Mrs. Cornelia Stipes and her 3 daughters operated a boarding house above the Provost Marshal’s Office.  Apparently Mrs. Stipes was a widow and she provided board and lodging in order to ‘keep the wolves from the door’.  She primarily had military officers as boarders.  But she also had a ‘visual reporter’, James E. Taylor, a sketch artist for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper stay for a while as well.  Sketches like his were the only visual images that the general public saw all through the war.

Philip Frankel and Company operated a store in this building from 1858 – 1860.  He sold ‘ready-made’ clothing for men and boys.  In this photo there is a display of gloves, hats, socks and shoes but this reimagined store also had pants, vests, shirts and more in stock.  Researchers have matched the goods on display to the period when this store was in business.  

The picture above shows what Harpers Ferry looked like in 1859, just before the famous raid on the armory by John Brown.  Note the plumes of smoke and all the factories lined along the river.  Coal was the fuel that powered the town’s industries and it was reputedly as dingy and probably unhealthy environment.  This was an important industrial center…

Construction on the United States Armory and Arsenal began here in 1799.  This was one of only two such facilities in the United States, the other being in Springfield Massachusetts.  These 2 facilities produced most of the small arms for the U.S. Army.  Between 1801 and 1861, when it was destroyed to prevent capture during the Civil War, the Harpers Ferry Armory produced more than 600,000 muskets, rifles and pistols. 

Captain John H. Hall pioneered the use and production of interchangeable parts in firearms manufactured in his rifle works at Harpers Ferry between 1820 and 1840.  He developed the first breech loading weapon to be adopted by the U.S. Army and he used water power and ‘automation’ to speed production and standardize parts. 

To learn more about John Hall and his accomplishments, go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_H._Hall_(gunsmith). 

This large brick building was part of Storer College.  It was an historic black college that was originally established as a normal school to train black teachers.  It operated from 1865 until 1955.  It had been established after the Civil War with the help of philanthropic New England based Baptists.  It lost state funding after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional. 

The old college former campus and buildings were acquired by the National Park Service in 1962.  The buildings are used as one of the National Park Service training centers, as well as the Park Services library.   The large building also a small exhibit that explains the history and nature of Harpers Ferry Wetlands…a special resource along the bottomland of the Shenandoah River.

The former Storer College campus is historically significant for another reason.  This is where “The Niagara Movement” held its first public meeting in the United States.  The group’s first meeting had been held near Niagara Falls…on the Canadian side of the border because the founding members of the organization, a group of African Americans were refused lodging in Buffalo New York.

 

Founded by W.E.B. Du Bois, a Harvard University educated African American, the Niagara Movement began the long process toward achieving racial equality.  Harpers Ferry was chosen for the first meeting on American soil because John Brown’s Raid on the Harper’s Ferry Arsenal is considered by many to have been where the first shots were fired in the Civil War.  The Niagara Movement continued until 1911, providing the cornerstone for the modern civil rights era.  Almost all of the members of the Movement became the backbone for the newly formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. (NAACP)

This building immediately across from part of the old Storer College exhibit is home to another exhibit entitled “Black Voices: African American History”.  It is an interactive exhibit that has plenty of photos and exhibits along with narrated stories of hardships and the hard-won victories by African Americans from the days when they were slaves (‘just’ property) on through the Civil Rights era.  This poignant and disturbing exhibit will hold your attention, that’s for sure.

Appropriately enough, this is High Street which leads to the ‘Upper Town’ portion of Harpers Ferry.  We didn’t have time to explore it but much of the Upper Town (about 100 buildings) is included in the Harpers Ferry Historic District.  There are many houses from the 1800s that were built by the United States Government for the Harpers Ferry Armory. 

Unfortunately I missed my chance to photograph the Harpers Ferry railway station… It is a wooden Victorian style depot that was built in 1889.  It sits on the buried foundation of the original Harpers Ferry Armory Building.  Better yet, 4 passenger trains stop here each day, two of them Amtrak’s Capitol Limited which operates between Washington D.C. and Chicago Illinois. 

These are various photos of John Brown… He was a fervent American abolitionist who believed in and advocated for armed insurrection as the only way to overthrow the institution of slavery in the United States.  He gained much attention when he led small groups of volunteers during the Bleeding Kansas crisis in 1856.  He and his supporters killed 5 supporters of slavery in the infamous Pottawatomie Massacre, a response to the sacking of Lawrence Kansas by pro-slavery forces.  Later he commanded anti-slavery forces in 2 other battles in Kansas.

John Brown’s history and life story are well documented and it is a long and twisting tale… There isn’t enough room for it here.  You can learn a lot more about this more than impassioned man by going to Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_%28abolitionist%29.

This old fire-engine/guard house is where John Brown barricaded themselves before being captured by Federal troops.  It’s now known as “John Brown’s Fort”.  This is the only surviving building in the old federal armory complex that was built over the years starting in 1799. 

John Brown’s raid didn’t go according to plan.  He had met with Harriet Tubman and she told him that she’d recruit former slaves living in southern Canada for his purpose which she did.  He told abolitionist Frederick Douglass about his plan at Harpers Ferry and Douglass tried to talk him out of it.  In the end, Brown went forward with his plan.  He led far fewer men on the raid than he’d planned…only 16 white, 3 free blacks, 1 freed slave and a fugitive slave.  He was well equipped though…with 200 rifles and 950 pikes for the slaves that he expected to rise up and join forces with him.  In addition of course, Harpers Ferry Armory held 100,000 muskets and rifles.

Although the raid started out well for the group, it wasn’t long before local shopkeepers, townspeople and the local militia has the group pinned down.  The uprising didn’t happen.  The group was surrounded and the only escape route was blocked.  They did have hostages, one of them was Colonel Lewis Washington, President George Washington’s great, great nephew. 

In any case, by the next morning “John Brown’s Fort” was surrounded by a company of U.S. Marines…with Colonel Robert E. Lee of the U.S. Army in overall command.  First Lieutenant J.E.B. Stuart asked them to surrender but Brown refused saying that he preferred to die there.  That didn’t work out too well for him either as the doors were quickly breached, and he and his remaining men were captured. 

In the aftermath of the raid, John Brown was hung but the abolitionist cause in the north was energized.  In the south, fearing a real uprising, the states better organized their militias…which in turn prepared them better for the upcoming conflict.  Of course, Robert E. Lee and J.E.B. Stuart resigned from their Union/Federal Commissions and went on to lead Confederate forces against the North. 

We really only saw a portion of Harpers Ferry National Historic Park and none of the town of Harpers Ferry.  The Park itself covers over 3,600 acres and we only saw its Lower Town portion.  To learn more, you can go to https://www.nps.gov/hafe/index.htm.

There have been a number of railway bridges built across the Shenandoah and/or the Potomac River at Harpers Ferry.  The first one was constructed in 1839 and a second one was built in 1851.  They were destroyed in the Civil War and replaced by temporary structures as the war raged on.  A new bridge was built in 1870 but it washed away in a 1936 flood.

There are two bridges today, both of them over the Potomac River and used by CSX.  The ruins at the right are from the 1870 bridge.  The bridge at the left was built in 1896 and it’s still in use.  Another bridge is just beyond this one and it was added in 1931.  The tunnel across the river was built in 1894 but it has been widened to allow the widest possible curve in the newer bridge as it crosses the river.

The Civil War was tough on Harpers Ferry.  The town changed hands 8 times between 1861 and 1865.  Because of its strategic location the opposing armies frequently moved through the area.  When Confederate General Robert E. Lee invaded Maryland in 1862, he didn’t want to continue without capturing the town.  It was not only on his supply line but it was also one of his escape routes if the invasion didn’t go well.  Lee had General Stonewall Jackson surround the town and after a brisk fight, the Federal garrison of 12,419 troops surrendered.  This was the largest surrender of U.S. Military personnel until the Battle of Bataan in World War II. 

This is the view looking downstream on the Potomac River.  It actually comes in from the left and is joined by the Shenandoah River on the right.  In any case, the ‘notch’ through the mountains carved by these rivers created the strategic and historic town of Harpers Ferry.  The view is rather pretty too…don’t you think?

Then it was off to our Hampton Inn in the nearby town of Charles Town West Virginia.  From there, it was all about finding a place to have dinner.

This is Mi Degollado, a Mexican restaurant in Charles Town.  On their website, they state that all of their Mexican food is ‘homemade and prepared on site’.  As of this year, they will have been in business for 20 years…quite an achievement.

It was a Tuesday night and Mi Degollado was a very busy place!  Like many Mexican restaurants, the colors are bright and cheerful if a little over the top.  The plants along the divider between the dining areas is a nice touch.

Laurie had a Margarita and I had my usual Miller Lite.  The Margarita was pretty good but there wasn’t much ice in it and had to ask the waiter for more.

Sorry about this picture of our appetizer…or part of our appetizer.  We ordered this Chori Queso ($5.50) with tortilla chips to get us started.  It was good and we were hungry…so this is all that was left when I remembered to take a picture. 

Laurie decided to order a pair of Cheese Quesadillas with sour cream and guacamole. ($8.30 in total) She liked the quesadillas and she loved Mi Degollado’s guacamole!

I ordered from Mi Degollado’s “Specialties of the House”.  These were my pair of soft Chimichangas filled with beef tips and topped with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes and sour cream…served with fried beans.  Laurie was happy because I gave her my guacamole (on the side) but this entrée just didn’t appeal to me, either visually or taste-wise.   It was just a mess!  Maybe I just ordered wrong for me…

Degollado is a small town in the eastern highlands of the Mexican State of Jalisco…and I’m sure that the name of the restaurant is in reference to the town.  If not in Spanish, the word ‘degollado’ means “to slit one’s throat’.

Mi Degollado has 2 locations, this one in Charles Town and another in Sheperdstown West Virginia…the latter allegedly being the most haunted town in America.  The Charles Town restaurant is located at 92 Somerset Boulevard.  Phone: 304-725-0333.  Their website is found at: http://midegolladowv.com/home/4215125.

That’s it for now.  Only 2 more posts and our August 2018 trip will be completed!  Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave