Harpers Ferry

It's a big complex out in the woods.

You go drive through Harper's Ferry, which is a beautiful, historic town, Civil War town.

There's a lot of reenactments there if you're into Civil War and other U.S. history.

Harper's Ferry is beautiful.

So you get to drive through Harper's Ferry.

You get to drive in some little bit of windy roads.

And then you show up at this huge motorsports complex.

I think what you meant to say was thank you.

I do love Harpers Ferry.

Matt is obsessed with it.

Well, it's the most charming, like, historic, very well-preserved community right on the, like, the convergence of two significant rivers in West Virginia.

yeah.

I don't think that's an overstatement.

We stumbled across it when we first went to Harpers Ferry a little over two years ago on another meandering road trip.

Yes.

I've thought about a lot of the things that she used to tell me that I was a little reckless at.

But there's been times where I have been in a situation where it's like, I mean, for instance, Harper's Ferry one time in a daycare, out of anywhere, in a daycare and we're running this...

I can't remember if we were running a spirit box or a phasma box or something.

We were just kind of letting it go.

American Scenery, Volume 2, by Nathaniel Parker Willis.

Harper's Ferry, from the Blue Ridge.

the scenery at harper's ferry is perhaps the most singularly picturesque in america the views already given display its beauty as seen from below to attain that given in the present number it was necessary to climb the blue ridge by a narrow winding path immediately above the bank of the potomac the view from this lofty summit amply repays the fatigue incurred by its ascent the junction of the two rivers is immediately beneath the spectator's feet and his delighted eye resting first upon the beautiful and thriving village of harper's ferry wanders over the wide and woody plains extending to the alleghany mountains president jefferson who has given the name to a beautiful rock immediately above the village has left a powerful description of the scenery of harper's ferry which we shall give to our readers the passage of the potomac through the blue ridge is perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in nature you stand at 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 potomac 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 will form first that the rivers begin to flow afterwards that in this place particularly they have been dammed up by the blue ridge of mountains and have formed an ocean which filled the whole valley that continuing to rise they have at length broken over at the spot and have torn the mountain down from its summit to its base the piles of rock on each hand but particularly from the shenandoah the evident marks of their disruption and avulsion from their beds by the most powerful agents of nature corroborate the impression but the distant finishing which nature has given to the picture is of a very different character it is a true contrast to the foreground it is as placid and delightful as it is wild and tremendous for the mountain being cloven asunder she presents to your eye through the cleft a small catch of smooth blue horizon at an infinite distance in the plain country inviting you as it were from the riot and tumult roaring around to pass through the breach and participate of the calm below here the eye ultimately composes itself and that way too the road happens actually to lead you cross the potomac above the junction pass along its side through the base of the mountain for three miles its terrible precipices hanging in fragments over you and within about twenty miles reach frederictown and the fine country around that this scene is worth a voyage across the atlantic yet here as in the neighborhood of the natural bridge are people who have passed their lives within half a dozen miles and have never been to survey the monuments of a war between rivers and mountains which must have shaken the earth itself to its center and of section twenty Section 21 of American Scenery, Volume 2.

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Come, gentlemen, said Washington, who will be my bedfellow? Both declined.

Colonel Johnson often afterwards declared that greatly as he should have felt honored by such intimacy, the awe and reverence with which the chief had inspired him, even in their daily and unreserved intercourse, would have made the liberty seem little short of profanation.

While the party were exploring in the vicinity of Harper's Ferry, news arrived of the burning at the stake of Colonel Crawford by the Indians at Sandusky.

He signed his entries, Wes.

He was 26, a school teacher from Pennsylvania, walking the trail north from Rockfish Gap to Harper's Ferry on two weeks off.

He had small, neat, slanted handwriting, the kind you'd see on a blackboard.

His entry from September 29th said the leaves were starting to turn and he'd seen a doe with two fawns.

Oh, God, I have so many.

I want to say like John Brown, because I was obsessed with Harper's Ferry as a kid.

It's a weird thing for a kid to be obsessed with.

I guess I should have known how I ended up doing the work that I'd be doing, that I was obsessed with John Brown.

And it was the homestead and farm of the famous abolitionist John Brown.

And he's actually buried there where he spent some time before his infamous raid on Harper's Ferry.

And while there haven't been reports of Brown himself hanging around, he's a pretty scary looking guy.

I don't know if you've ever seen a picture of