Harpers Ferry
National Historical Park

he Amtrak station in Harpers Ferry consists of a platform with shelter adjacent to the historic wood-frame depot, which was designed in 1894 by architect E. Francis Baldwin for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O). Baldwin, a Baltimore resident, built 136 train stations and more than 500 other buildings during a 50-year career. He also designed the former B&O station in Rockville, Md., which no longer serves passengers but sits adjacent to the current rail station there.

The station is part of the Harpers Ferry National Historic Park, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 14, 1979. Throughout the years, the depot has been altered many times and moved from its original location overlooking the scenic confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers in 1931, as a part of a series of railroad improvements, and now sits on part of the old Armory foundations. Designed in an age when it was deemed appropriate to shield women from the male population, the original station had two waiting rooms: the women’s with the fireplace and the men’s on the other side of the ticket office.

Today, the station is opened primarily for MARC commuter passengers. National Park personnel open and close the waiting area for touring daily, and the structure also contains two accessible bathrooms, a MARC ticket office, meeting room and an exhibit room in the former women’s waiting room.

While passenger rail traffic declined in the middle of the 20th century, the station remained in service. However, the structure fell into disrepair and was named to the Top 10 Most Endangered Stations in America list in 1999. Following four decades of on-again, off-again negotiation, the station and grounds of the U. S. Armory were transferred to the National Park Service in 2001 and restoration of the station began.

Finally, on April 30, 2007, town mayor James Addy rededicated the station following its $2.2 million renovation. The late Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia had secured $1.89 million in federal funding as state funding to bring the project to fruition. Lumus Construction of Woburn, Mass., was the main contractor for the restoration project.

Great American Stations

obert Harper, a millwright, purchased 125 acres of land from Lord Thomas Fairfax in 1751, sited in the Blue Ridge Mountains at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers. Along with erecting a water-powered sawmill on the Shenandoah, Harper also operated a ferry across the Potomac River. “Potomac” is a European spelling of an Algonquian name for a tribe subject to the Powhatan confederacy, which inhabited the upper reaches of the Northern Neck in the vicinity of Fredericksburg, Virginia. Over the centuries it has been simplified from “Patawomeke” to become, officially, “Potomac” in 1931.

Great American Stations