Harpers Ferry: 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 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.
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