Harpers Ferry National Historical ParkSide 34 af 63
Virginius Island: The Mill Island at Harpers Ferry and How the Park Preserves Its Ruins
Virginius Island is a thirteen-acre island at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, where the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers meet. In the 1800s it held a rail line, roads, houses, factories, orchards and gardens. Today it is an archeological preserve in Harpers Ferry Historical Park, and it still shows what the rivers' power built.
Postcard view, about 1890, of the Shenandoah Valley from Jefferson Rock, with a large cultivated garden on Virginius in the foreground. NPS, Harpers Ferry National Historical Park.
How the island grew
From the 1700s, the power of the two rivers ran industry and transport, and Harpers Ferry became a manufacturing center because of its place at the confluence. Residential communities grew at the east end of Virginius Island, next to Lower Town. Its first recorded structure was a gristmill with stones turned by a waterwheel, and by 1830 a bridge, mill, mill house and machinery stood among the trees.
The NPS finds the cultural landscape historically significant under National Register criteria in three periods:
| Period | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1750-1820 | The Shenandoah Canal was established and the first mill was built |
| 1820-1855 | The island was divided into smaller parcels, most structures went up and milling took hold |
| 1855-1890 | One owner consolidated the community, which suffered destruction from the Civil War and from floods |
Vacant flour mill and unused railroad spur, about 1904. NPS, Harpers Ferry National Historical Park.
What is left
Three heights surround the island: Maryland Heights, Loudon Heights and Bolivar Heights. The river's falls and natural channels shaped both the island and where buildings stood. In 1828 the writer Anne Royall noted a small island in the Shenandoah, a few hundred yards above the chasm, with several houses on it.
Despite frequent floods, traces of the island's development are still visible: ruins of cotton and flour mills, old waterways, and houses. A branch of the CSX railroad follows the original 1836 rail alignment. Water intake tunnels, canals, raceways and head gates are what remains of the water system that moved goods and powered the mills. Foundations of two cotton mills, a flour mill and a pulp mill are the only industrial structures left, and the ruins of homes are the foundations of five dwellings and the rubble of a row-house complex.
Preserving it
The NPS began managing Harpers Ferry National Monument in 1955, at first concentrating on John Brown's raid and Civil War activity and on preserving Lower Town. Attention to Virginius Island's cultural resources grew over time, and its preservation program combines archeology, stabilization and limited restoration. A Cultural Landscape Report written in 1993 uses historic records to tell the landscape's history and analyze its present condition, and guides stabilization and interpretation.
The river wall and cotton mill ruins at Virginius Island, looking southeast, 2021. NPS.
Two major floods in 1996 damaged the shoreline ruins, washed away part of the trail system and toppled trees, and the debris led the park to close the island to visitors for several years. By 2003 it had stabilized the shoreline mill ruins and water systems against future floods and fast plant growth. The park clears vegetation routinely and removes silt from the canal now and then. As of the source, it was stabilizing the seven stone masonry flumes at the pulp mill ruins, and similar work on the cotton mill foundations was planned for 2022.
A water tunnel at Virginius Island, facing south, 2021. NPS.
The island is a vernacular cultural landscape of national significance on the National Register of Historic Places, under criteria A, B, C and D, with a period of significance of 1750 to 1890.
Sources
- National Park Service, "Virginius Island Cultural Landscape", https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/virginius-island-600005.htm; the NPS page cites Anne Newport Royall, The Black Book; or, A Continuation of Travels in the United States (1828); rewritten in hubnx's own words.