Two Anniversaries Fall Here, in the Busiest Month and the Quietest

Two dates anchor the calendar at Harpers Ferry, and they could not be more differently placed.

On the night of 16 October 1859, John Brown and twenty-one others crossed the Potomac and seized the United States Armory. The raid was over by the morning of the eighteenth: ten of the party were dead, five escaped, and Brown was a prisoner. He was tried at Charles Town, eight miles away, convicted on 2 November of treason against Virginia, murder and inciting slave insurrection, and hanged on 2 December 1859. Four more of his men were hanged on 16 December and two on 16 March 1860.

Those two anniversaries fall in the busiest and the quietest weeks of the visiting year respectively.

Mid-October is peak season here. The ridges are colouring, weekend queues run from mid-morning to mid-afternoon, and the town of 269 residents is receiving several thousand people a day through one parking lot. Visiting on the anniversary of the raid means seeing the place at full capacity. The compensation is that the park frequently marks the date with programming, and a ranger talk on the ground where the events happened is worth more than a panel.

Early December is the other end of the scale. The leaves are gone, the light is short, the last shuttle is 5.30 p.m., and on a weekday you may have an exhibit building to yourself. For anyone whose interest is the history rather than the scenery, it is the better visit. Charles Town, where the trial and the execution took place, is a twenty-minute drive and has the courthouse still standing; the gallows site is a few streets away in what is now a residential neighbourhood, marked and easy to walk past.

A third date belongs in the same list and gets far less attention. The September 1862 siege ended on the fifteenth with over twelve thousand Union troops surrendering on Bolivar Heights — the largest surrender of United States forces in the war — and Antietam followed two days later, seventeen miles north.

Programming for anniversary dates is arranged annually and not always published far ahead. Ask at the visitor center desk rather than relying on a schedule found online.