Our writers
Who writes this
Everything published about Harpers Ferry on this site carries a name. Here is who those names belong to, what each of them covers, and how to read everything they have written.
Prudence Ashby
Senior Editor
Beat: The National Park, Getting There & Parking, Getting Around
Prudence has edited mid-Atlantic travel coverage for twelve years and owns the practical pages here: the Cavalier Heights lot, the shuttle timetable either side of the clock change, fees that are card-only, and which navigation apps send drivers down a hill with nowhere to stop. She quotes park figures with the date she checked them.
5 guides · 5 news posts
Emmett Coyle
Trails & Rivers Editor
Beat: Hiking & Trails, Scenic Views, Appalachian Trail
Emmett section-hiked the Appalachian Trail through four states before he wrote about it and has guided on the lower Shenandoah. He covers Maryland Heights and the towpath, the footbridge corridor, and the rafting and tubing season. He reads a river gauge before a forecast, and he will tell you when a climb is beyond what a group can manage.
3 guides · 3 news posts
Loretta Sims
History Editor
Beat: History & the Civil War, Museums & Exhibits, Day Trips
Loretta writes the reason the name is known: the October 1859 raid on the federal armoury, the trial at Charles Town, the 1862 surrender on Bolivar Heights, and Storer College and the Niagara Movement that met on its campus in 1906. She has worked in a county archive, prefers a document to a plaque, and flags where the interpretation is contested.
2 guides · 1 news post
These are our own staff bylines. We do not publish guest posts, we do not accept sponsored articles under a staff name, and no page here is signed by someone who did not write it. Portraits are deliberately absent: attaching a stock photograph of a real person to an editorial byline would misrepresent them, so you get initials instead.
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