Harpers Ferry supply base

Then

Federal troops occupied Harpers Ferry on February 25, 1862 to hold communication and supply lines along the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and eventually 14,000 soldiers of the Railroad Brigade were stationed there. Philip Sheridan arrived on August 6, 1864 to open his Shenandoah Valley campaign, and the town became an important Union supply depot, with supply trains leaving for the front under threat from Mosby's Partisan Rangers.

Jackson captured about 12,500 Federal troops there on September 15, 1862, and the Confederate invasions of 1863 and 1864 cost the Union the railroad bridge and stored supplies. Sheridan's men then built a 2-mile line of earthworks with six artillery redoubts on Bolivar Heights, which secured Harpers Ferry as a Union supply base for the rest of the war.

Now

Park

The town is part of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, where a trail follows the traces of the Bolivar Heights rifle pits and the remains of Battery No. 1 overlook the Shenandoah Valley.

Lines owned by CSX run through Harpers Ferry today.