Harpers Ferry (West Virginia)

Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. A historic town in Jefferson County, West Virginia, in the lower Shenandoah Valley. The town’s population was less than 300 people in the latest census. The town is situated at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers, where Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia meet in the easternmost town in West Virginia.

Originally named Harper’s Ferry after an 18th-century ferry owner, the town lost its apostrophe in 1891 in an update by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names. It gained fame in 1859 when abolitionist John Brown led a raid on the Harpers Ferry Armory in a doomed effort to start a slave rebellion in Virginia and across the South. During the American Civil War, the town became the northernmost point of Confederate-controlled territory, and changed hands several times due to its strategic importance.

Much of the lower town, which was in ruins by the end of the Civil War and ravaged by subsequent floods, has been rebuilt and preserved by the National Park Service.