As I said earlier, today we went to Harpers Ferry. We got there in the early afternoon and according to the guide, we could spend the whole afternoon in the town alone. There was also a hiking trail up to a hill overlooking the town and a couple other things as well. We started out with a tour led by a park ranger in period costume. He showed us around much of the lower town. You see, Harpers Ferry is built into a hillside. This makes for steep roads and paths that wind through the town as it ascends the hillside. The ranger said that the family who owned the town was very stingy and charged for new buildings by their width (maybe length too, I don't remember) but they didn't say anything about how tall the buildings could be. So all the buildings in the town are thin and tall. One building that was built into a rock wall was five stories high! Here are some pictures of the town.
We also saw John Brown's fort. This was where John Brown made his last stand during his raid on Harpers Ferry. Here's a picture of it.
Here are some other highlights of our visit there.
An 1830's Roman Catholic church.
Jefferson's Rock, an outlook that Jefferson was at when he visited this area.
And the cemetery. Some of the people buried here were born in the mid-1700's and died in the early 1800's!
Finally here are just a couple pictures of the scenery. The town is located at the spot where the Potomac and Shenendoah Rivers merge into just the Potomac River.
Jacob also did the junior ranger program here and got a badge for it; he really enjoyed doing that.
Overall Harpers Ferry was a great place. The amount of history that happened here is astounding. It is a beautiful place well worth the hours we spent there. There is so much more I could say, but I will close this post with a picture of a sign hanging in the information building. Today's quote is:
Beautiful!!!
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