We visited Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia in late October 2025 while staying at the Hagerstown/Antietam Battlefield KOA Holiday about an hour away.
Most famous for abolitionist John Brown’s 1859 attempt to start an armed slave revolt by seizing the U.S. Army Arsenal, we came to learn during our visit that Harpers Ferry is also associated with a variety of other people and events that influenced the course of US history. Harpers Ferry witnessed the first successful application of interchangeable manufacture, the arrival of the first successful American railroad, John Brown’s attack on slavery, the largest surrender of Federal troops during the Civil War, and the education of formerly enslaved people in one of the earliest integrated schools in the United States.
We started our visit at the park visitors center which is located about a mile outside of the main town of Harpers Ferry. There are options to take a trail along the Shenandoah River into town, or a park service shuttle bus that runs every 15-minutes or so. We chose to take the walking trail into town, and about half-way along the trail we decided to intercept the Appalachian Trail which veered away from the river and followed a hilly ridge before dropping back down into the town.
There were several interesting landmarks along this short section of the Appalachian Trail including the original town graveyard where we saw the headstone of town-founder Robert Harper, and the Jefferson Rock where, during a visit in 1783 Thomas Jefferson wrote “On your right comes up the Shenandoah, having ranged along the foot of the mountain a hundred miles to seek a vent. On your left approaches the Patowmac [Potomac], in quest of a passage also. In the moment of their junction, they rush together against the mountain, rend it asunder, and pass off to the sea… This scene is worth the voyage across the Atlantic.”
As our short journey along the Appalachian Trail came to an end, we descended down some stone steps into the town of Harpers Ferry, passing a number of historic buildings along the way. After having lunch at the “Almost Heaven Bar and Grill” located in a historic building across the street from the train station, we visited the John Brown Museum which presented a lot of detail about John Brown’s life as a dedicated abolitionist, and the specifics of his (ultimately failed) raid on the town armory which sought to spark a general uprising of the area slave population.
Brown was captured on October 18, 1859, by a detachment of U.S. Marines under the command of Army Colonel Robert E. Lee. Brown and six of his men were imprisoned in nearby Charles Town. Virginia seized the opportunity to try “the insurgents.” Brown was soon found guilty of treason against Virginia, conspiring with slaves to rebel and murder. He was hanged on December 2, 1859. John Brown’s last written words on the day of his execution predicted the Civil War. “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much blood shed it might be done.”
We enjoyed wandering around the town and seeing both the reconstructed buildings as well as the ruins that remain and include the foundations and footprints of a number of the original armory buildings. It was interesting to visit the building now known as John Brown’s Fort that was the Armory’s fire engine and guard house. It was in this building that John Brown and several of his followers barricaded themselves during the final hours of their ill-fated raid of October 16, 17, and 18, 1859. The building is now located just a couple of hundred feet from its original location, which is marked by a monument to John Brown.
We enjoyed visiting “The Point” where the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers meet. From this location, we could see three states – Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia – as well as the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers. We walked over the rail bridge that crosses the Potomac River to the Maryland side of the river. The rail line travels through a tunnel at this point, and we returned back over the bridge to finish our visit to Harpers Ferry. Before heading back to the visitor center on the shuttle bus we stopped at a couple of interesting historic buildings.
One of the buildings had partially excavated floors that showed the location of earlier building foundations and an alley-way. The other building included a display of gun making equipment that would have been used by John H. Hall, a New England gunmaker who spent several years in the mid-19th century tooling new workshops and perfecting precision machinery for producing rifles with interchangeable parts – a novel approach at the time for an industry which was traditionally based on the manual labor of skilled craftsmen. This approach known as the “uniformity principle” of interchangeable manufacture, is said to have helped lead the change from craft-based production to manufacture by machine within the US.
Our visit to Harpers Ferry offered a fascinating insight into the life and legacy of John Brown, as well as the events leading up to the Civil War. Our visit focused on the town of Harpers Ferry, and it will be interesting to return some time in the future and visit some of the other more remote areas of the park that include some 22 miles of hiking trails.
