Lewis & Clark Trip 1 B (3/26-27/2021)

Friday, March 26, 2021 (continued)

John Brown's Fort/Armory Engine House (1848) was dismantled
in 1891 and displayed at the World's Columbian Exposition in
Chicago, then abandoned; in 1894 there was a campaign to return
the building to Harpers Ferry where it was rebuilt three miles
outside town; in 1909 Storer College had the building moved
onto its campus; finally in 1968 it was moved back to the
Lower Town by the National Park Service

I will not relate the history of John Brown's Raid in this post.

John Brown's Fort (7/29/1999)

Views from The Point in Harpers Ferry:

View south toward the Shenandoah River with
stone piers of an 1882 bridge that was destroyed in a 1936 flood

View farther upriver on the Shenandoah (7/29/1999)

Panoramic view east toward the Potomac River and bridges

Railroad Bridge (7/29/1999), now a pedestrian walkway
and part of the Appalachian Trail

Bollman truss railroad bridge abutments (1868-1936)
replacing earlier bridges that had to be
rebuilt nine times during the Civil War! (7/29/1999)

View east down the Potomac River (7/29/1999)

Maryland Heights cliffs: home to at least one pair of 
Falco peregrinus/Peregrine Falcons; we saw one in flight!

John Brown Monument (1895) marks the original
site of John Brown's Fort/Armory Engine House
that was covered by a railroad embankment in 1892

This photo shows the original location of
John Brown's Fort with St Peter's Church
up the hill on the left; it also shows
temporary housing for escaped slaves

Site of the Harpers Ferry Armory (1799-1802), was the
second federal armory  built in the United States,
for the manufacture of arms 

Site of the Armory Superintendent's House, where
Meriwether Lewis hand-delivered a letter to then superintendent
Joseph Perkin from Secretary of War Henry Dearborn,
instructing the superintendent to cooperate with Lewis to make
"such arms & Iron work" as requested with least possible delay

A listing of what Meriwether Lewis procured at Harpers Ferry:

*15 rifles (modified by Lewis)

24 pipe tomahawks

36 pipe tomahawks for “Indian Presents”

24 large knives for “Indian Presents”

15 powder horns and pouches

15 pairs of bullet molds

15 wipers or gun worms

15 ball screws

15 gun slings

extra parts of locks and tools for repairing arms

40 fish giggs (multi pointed-fish spears) for “Indian Presents”

collapsible iron boat frame

1 small grindstone*

Replica collapsible iron boat frame designed by
Meriwether Lewis and Thomas Jefferson to make it easier to
portage around Great Falls of the Missouri River; work
on this boat frame turned a one-week stay into one month for Lewis

Remains of one of several tailraces emptying into
the Potomac River; water power was used to run
the machines of the armory (KSS)

The Harpers Ferry Armory was destroyed during the Civil War, and most of the property was sold. Interesting to note, a Virginia militia attacked the armory on 4/18/1861, dismantled the machinery, which ended up in Richmond, VA and Fayetteville, NC. Many of the Harpers Ferry armory workers followed the machinery to manufacture weapons for the Confederacy.
After lunch, we headed uphill from the Lower Town of Harpers Ferry.

Forsythia sp in full bloom

Harper slate gateway

Hilltop House Hotel (founded 1888 by Thomas Lovett,
an African-American, rebuilt after fires in 1912 and 1919)
hosted notables such as Mark Twain, Alexander Graham Bell,
W E B DuBois, Woodrow Wilson, and Bill Clinton

The hotel closed in 2008, due to deterioration of the foundation making it structurally unsafe. A hotel development company that purchased the property in 2007 and the town leaders have not been able to agree on the details of a project to build an upper-echelon hotel in the 1912 design of the original Hilltop House. After over a decade?!

The Hilltop House property includes five Armory Dwellings
(1827-1837, as worker housing) on Magazine Hill

Panoramic view from Hilltop House over the Potomac River (KSS)

Harpers Ferry Public Square (1852) with gazebo (1908)

1959 Rambler Rebel V-8 Country Club Hardtop (KSS)

Anthony Memorial Hall of the former Storer College, was
built as Armory housing of workers and managers, then
was donated by the US government in 1868 to the college,
which closed in 1955 and the buildings were acquired by
the National Park Service in 1962

Storer College was established in 1867 as a normal school to train African-American teachers, based on funds raised by Reverend Nathan Cook Brackett of New England's Freewill Baptist Home Mission Society who had started a primary school in 1865. These funds were matched by John Storer, a philanthropist from Maine, who stipulated the school should be open "to both sexes without regard to race or color." There was no tuition and rooms were provided. The West Virginia legislature appropriated funds to educate only 17 prospective teachers, but never gave the school accreditation. After the Supreme Court decision in Brown vs Board of Education in 1954, the WV legislature withdrew its funding, since now "Negroes" could attend "any" state college.

Charmandoah (an "accommodation")

We took the steep Potomac Heritage
National Scenic Trail back down the ridge

Ruins of the Shenandoah Pulp Mill (1887-1888) that had
ten turbines over five sluiceways, closed in 1935 and is
the last remnant of water-powered industry in Harpers Ferry

*On 4/18/1803, Meriwether Lewis departed Harpers Ferry.*

Next: Lewis & Clark Trip 1 C.