Existing comment:
Harpers Ferry Arms a Nation:
In an age of waterpower, the village of "Shenandoah Falls at Mr. Harper's Ferry" was a factory town waiting to happen. When George Washington, impressed by "its inexhaustible supply of water," chose Harpers Ferry as the site of the nation's second arms factory, the town's early fate was sealed. Waterpowered mills and factories would proliferate until the Civil War. Even after the war's destruction lessened Harpers Ferry's importance as a manufacturing center, and steam was becoming the preferred power source, water wheels and turbines were still being installed here into the early twentieth century.
America's first successful use of interchangeable parts took place in Harpers Ferry. During the 1820s and 30s, John Hall perfected machinery for producing interchangeable parts for rifles, contributing not only to the success of his rifle works but to the development of the American factory system.
Little evidence survives of the armory and arsenal buildings that were once a center of Harpers Ferry life. Construction began in 1799, with buildings put up hastily through the 1820s. By the 1840s and 50s, major reconstruction and reorganization were undertaken.
1859:
When John Brown attempted to raid the armory in 1859, there were eighteen workshops, mills, storehouses, and offices on the grounds.
1861:
Union troops set fire to the arsenal and armory shops when Virginia seceded.
1862:
The U.S. Musket Factory stood in ruins, burned by both Union and Confederate troops.
ca 1876-86:
Ruins of the musket factory lie behind John Brown's fort (the former armory fire engine house).
1955:
The National Park Service begin managing Harpers Ferry National Monument and adopted a policy of restoring the town to an appearance between 1859 and 1865. But by 1955 [???], only a monument to John Brown stands at the original site of the armory fire engine house, while a historical marker is all that remains of the armory.
Meriwether Lewis:
In March 1803, Lewis came to the Harpers Ferry Armory to supply the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The weapons, tools and parts from Harpers Ferry traveled almost 10,000 miles on the journey -- from the Potomac River to the Pacific Ocean and back. No other weapons, tools and parts from the Armory may have traveled as far or been as valuable as those on the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
Virginius Island, 1857:
By mid-century, Virginius Island, like Harpers Ferry, was an established industrial community, with a flour mill, granary, sawmill, cotton factory, cooperage, and wagon-making shop, as well as the U.S. Rifle Factory (far right). |