Harpers Ferry is a town in Jefferson County, West Virginia, situated at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers. Robert Harper, a Pennsylvania Quaker, purchased the land in 1751 and established a ferry ten years later, and Thomas Jefferson admired the settlement's view of the rivers during a 1783 visit. In 1794, President George Washington proposed that a federal arsenal be established at Harpers Ferry, and the arsenal - on its completion in 1796 - became the second of its kind in the United States, after the Springfield Armory in Massachusetts. The ferry closed in 1824 and was replaced by a covered wooden road bridge, and a railroad bridge was constructed from 1836 to 1837, making Harpers Ferry the only railroad crossing of the Potomac until after the American Civil War. Industry developed on Virginius Island as Harpers Ferry became a major rail junction. In 1859, the abolitionist John Brown raided the federal arsenal in a failed attempt to provoke a slave uprising, helping to precipitate the Civil War. Harpers Ferry changed hands several times during the war, and 12,419 Union Army soldiers surrendered to Confederate general Stonewall Jackson at the Battle of Harpers Ferry in September 1862. In July 1864, the Union recaptured the garrison and defeated Jubal Early's attempt to recapture it for the South. After the war, several freed Blacks settled in Harpers Ferry, and Storer College opened in 1868 to educate these freedmen. However, the destruction of the arsenal during the Civil War had ended the town's prosperity and strategic importance, and Harpers Ferry instead based its economy on Black tourism. Storer closed in 1955, and, by 1957, Harpers Ferry had nearly become a ghost town, resulting in the town being transformed into a national monument, with preservation efforts aimed at restoring the town's 19th-century image. By 2010, Harpers Ferry had a population of 286 people, of whom 94% were white, 4% Black, 1% Native American, and 1% Hispanic.
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