Harpers Ferry National Historical Park

Harpers Ferry sits at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia, where the two rivers cut through the Blue Ridge in adjacent water gaps. Thomas Jefferson wrote that the view from the clifftop above town was worth a voyage across the Atlantic, and the town gained historical weight as the site of John Brown's 1859 raid on the federal arsenal. The lower town historic district, rebuilt after repeated Civil War flooding and battle damage, preserves antebellum commercial architecture at the river's edge.