Harpers Ferry (W. Va.)

Harpers Ferry is a historic town in Jefferson County, West Virginia, United States. The population was 269 at the 2020 United States census. Situated at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers in the lower Shenandoah Valley, where Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia meet, it is the easternmost town in West Virginia as well as its lowest point above sea level. Originally named Harper's Ferry after an 18th-century ferry owner, the town lost its apostrophe in 1891 in an update by the United States Board on Geographic Names. It gained fame in 1859 when abolitionist John Brown led a raid on the Harpers Ferry Armory in a doomed effort to start a slave rebellion in Virginia and across the South. During the American Civil War, the town became the northernmost point of Confederate-controlled territory, and changed hands several times due to its strategic importance. An antebellum manufacturing and transportation hub, Harpers Ferry has long since reoriented its economy around tourism after being largely destroyed during the Civil War.: 10  Harpers Ferry is home to John Brown's Fort, West Virginia's most visited tourist site; the headquarters of the Appalachian Trail, whose midpoint is nearby; the former campus of Storer College, a historically black college established during Reconstruction; and one of four national training centers of the National Park Service. Much of the lower town, which was in ruins by the end of the Civil War and ravaged by subsequent floods, has been rebuilt and preserved by the National Park Service.: 15