Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Ferrying
I’ve been off the grid for a while, most recently at my stepson’s wedding in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. (Or West by God Virginia, as they sometimes say. And there’s no apostrophe in “Harpers.”)
Harpers Ferry, at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers, is probably best known as the site of John Brown’s raid on the Federal armory in 1859. Brown, who doesn’t appear to have thought things through all that carefully, hoped to precipitate a slave revolt, using captured weapons. Instead, he and his two dozen or so raiders were captured or killed within a day and a half by a force under the command of then Colonel Robert E. Lee. Brown was hanged a few months later, and the whole affair exacerbated the sectionalism that led to the Civil War.
But that aside, it’s a geographically fascinating place – and a totally cool place to get married. Here is
the view from the bathroom window at our hotel, with the Potomac on the left. The wedding took place more or less in front of the flag. (BTW, if you’re into hotel rooms, here’s a blog that documents them, among other things.)
A couple of pretty active train lines go through town, passing through a tunnel blasted through the end of the mountain to the left in the picture. (The tunnel cost less than $5,000 to build, but that was in 1839.) There is a barely visible advertising sign about blasting powder on the face of the cliff – at least I think that’s what it’s advertising.
It is a compelling argument about the impact of geography on transportation; prior to airplanes, if you wanted to cross the Alleghenies, you pretty much had to use one of the gaps in the mountains like this one. (George Washington thought the Potomac was the broad highway that would lead to the interior of the continent, and invested a lot of money in ultimately unsuccessful attempts to promote Potomac navigation.)
Harpers Ferry, at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers, is probably best known as the site of John Brown’s raid on the Federal armory in 1859. Brown, who doesn’t appear to have thought things through all that carefully, hoped to precipitate a slave revolt, using captured weapons. Instead, he and his two dozen or so raiders were captured or killed within a day and a half by a force under the command of then Colonel Robert E. Lee. Brown was hanged a few months later, and the whole affair exacerbated the sectionalism that led to the Civil War.
But that aside, it’s a geographically fascinating place – and a totally cool place to get married. Here is
the view from the bathroom window at our hotel, with the Potomac on the left. The wedding took place more or less in front of the flag. (BTW, if you’re into hotel rooms, here’s a blog that documents them, among other things.) A couple of pretty active train lines go through town, passing through a tunnel blasted through the end of the mountain to the left in the picture. (The tunnel cost less than $5,000 to build, but that was in 1839.) There is a barely visible advertising sign about blasting powder on the face of the cliff – at least I think that’s what it’s advertising.
It is a compelling argument about the impact of geography on transportation; prior to airplanes, if you wanted to cross the Alleghenies, you pretty much had to use one of the gaps in the mountains like this one. (George Washington thought the Potomac was the broad highway that would lead to the interior of the continent, and invested a lot of money in ultimately unsuccessful attempts to promote Potomac navigation.)
