The Shenandoah River, flowing north, empties into the Potomac at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.
The passage of the Patowmac through the Blue Ridge is perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in Nature. You stand on a very high point of land. On your right comes up the Shenandoah, having ranged along the foot of the mountain a hundred miles to seek a vent. On your left approaches the Patowmac in quest of a passage also. In the moment of their junction they rush together against the mountain, rend it asunder and pass off to the sea. The first glance of this scene hurries our senses into the opinion that this earth has been created in time, that the mountains were formed first, that the rivers began to flow afterwards, that in this place particularly they have been so dammed up by the Blue Ridge of mountains as to have formed an ocean which filled the whole valley; that, continuing to rise, they have at last broken over at this spot and have torn the mountain down from its summit to its base. The piles of rock on each hand, but particularly on the Shenandoah, the evident marks of their disruptions and avulsions from their beds by the most powerful agents in nature, corroborate the impression.
Thomas Jefferson, 1783
The confluence and the water power combined to make the location vital in early industrial America. The town was chartered in 1763 as Shenandoah Falls at Mr. Harper’s Ferry, named for its founder, Robert Harper. The United States Armory and Arsenal was established there in 1799; it produced more than 600,000 weapons by 1861. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad reached the town in 1834; the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal the year before. By the time of John Brown’s Raid in 1859 there were around 3,000 people in the town and a number of mills and foundries.
Harpers Ferry, Viriginia, became Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, when the new state was carved from Confederate Virginia during the Civil War.
Click on any of the photos for an album of larger versions of all six.
I love that you can travel between three states in the span of about 60 seconds. Not quite the four corners, but fun nonetheless.
Also: some of the best ice cream I’ve ever had.
Oh, now I’m homesick! I didn’t want to leave that area in the first place.
That stretch of both rivers is a blast to canoe. The rapids on the Shenandoah are a series of staircases that go for several miles. I once saw a dead cow hung up on a rock in the middle of the river. The area is crawling in Civil War history.
Cheers, Mi3ke