Harpers Ferry Seeks Backing To Expand Park
By Deborah Fitts
May '02 issue

HARPERS FERRY, W.Va. — Harpers Ferry National Historical Park could increase by 1299 acres, if park officials receive the necessary public support that will convince Congress to grant the expansion.

The new acreage would bring into the park two areas of greatest concern to preservationists in recent years, the Murphy Farm and a major portion of Schoolhouse Ridge.

In fact, said Park Superintendent Don Campbell, if the land is brought into the park, "a complete Civil War and African-American history would be preserved at Harpers Ferry."

At presstime in April Campbell was awaiting the results of an extensive public "outreach" by the park to gauge support for the addition.

Two options are being floated. One would add 527 acres of farmland, including the Murphy Farm and three other farm properties. Developers have plans for 188 homes on the Murphy Farm, to be served by a 200-foot water tower.

The other option would include the 527 acres of farmland plus another 772 acres adjacent to the park that is owned by other federal agencies.

The park is constrained by a congressionally imposed "ceiling" of 2505 acres.

Campbell was reluctant to characterize the direction of public comment, which was being received up to April 30. But he said, "There is at this point a great deal of interest in preserving the history that is currently unprotected."

If the expansion is approved, Campbell added, visitors will forever have "the opportunity to stand on the land where history happened, to walk these lands with a historian and have the story told to you."

All property acquisitions would be based on a "willing seller" basis, a policy that Campbell termed "helpful" in assuaging concerns among local landowners. A total of eight owners are involved in the privately held acreage that would be added to the park. Negotiations are already under way with "some" of them, according to Campbell.

The park's desire for expansion was originally met by caution in Congress, which wanted assurance that there was consensus to proceed. In 2000, with West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd leading the way, the Senate Appropriations Committee directed the park to hold public meetings and other outreach in order to gauge the level of support.

Campbell said it took "quite a while" to produce a video on the park, which was shown recently at four local public meetings that attracted a total of about 125 people. Two Pulitzer Prize winners lent themselves to the project, which was completed in January: Civil War historian James McPherson and David Levering Lewis, a scholar of the black leader W.E.B. DuBois.

The park also produced large, full-color, poster-style fliers with photos and maps detailing the expansion options.
With the comment period closed, Campbell said the park will study the public response and report back to Congress by this summer. If there is consensus to expand the park, it could be done either through language in an appropriations bill or through introduction of a new bill, he said.

The federal land being considered for addition includes 267 acres belonging to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service at the southern end of Schoolhouse Ridge — the right flank of the Confederate line under Stonewall Jackson in his 1862 siege of Harpers Ferry — and another 500 acres on Loudoun Heights and the adjoining Potomac Wayside that belong to the Appalachian National Scenic Trail.

The park already manages the Fish & Wildlife property, as the result of a directive by Congress last year. The park also currently assists in the protection of the Appalachian Trail. A portion of that property, 374 acres, was donated to the Trail with the landowner's intention that one day it would be added to the park, Campbell noted.

Adding the Loudoun Heights area into the boundary would "preserve the entire Civil War skyline to the south of the park," Campbell said. The property includes woodlots that supplied charcoal for the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, and is the site of Confederate encampments in 1862.

If Congress approves, ownership of both the Fish & Wildlife land and the Appalachian Trail land will shift to the National Park Service.

Campbell noted that controversy over the fate of Schoolhouse Ridge and the Murphy Farm, both under heavy threat of development, has been national news for a dozen years.

The park's outreach poster highlighted black history on the Murphy Farm, where in August 1906 members of an early civil rights organization known as the Niagara Movement made a pilgrimage to the farm. They came to see "John Brown's Fort," the engine house in Harpers Ferry where the aboli-tionist and his men holed up in 1859 during an abortive attempt to spark a slave uprising.

The small brick structure was taken to Chicago in 1895 for the World's Columbian Exposition and then was brought back to the Murphy Farm and positioned on a site above the Shenandoah River until 1909. It was later returned to the village.
On "John Brown's Day," Aug. 17, 1906, members of the Niagara Movement made a "silent pilgrimage" to the engine house on the Murphy Farm, according to the park's poster, even removing their shoes and socks "before treading this hallowed ground."

Among the speakers were DuBois, Lewis Douglass, son of Frederick Douglass, and a woman whose brother and nephew had fought with Brown at Harpers Ferry.

The Murphy Farm also has the remains of earthworks built by Union troops during the winter of 1863. Campbell said they are so pristine they look as if the soldiers "closed the door 140 years ago and walked away." In a box on the poster titled "Lest We Forget," the park compared Americans' reaction to the events of last Sept. 11 to the September 1862 campaign that brought death and devastation to the battlefields of Harpers Ferry, Antietam and South Mountain.

"Patriotic sites" like Harpers Ferry "are where Americans come to seek understanding, comfort and resolve in difficult times," the poster said. "These special places keep the story of who we are and where we came from as Americans."