Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, the site of John Brown’s raid, a controlled historic community, a National Park, beautifully located on both the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers, is only about an hour and a quarter from our house. But you can’t just drop in for a quick visit. You can drive around, but parking is really limited, you have to have a pass to visit places, the terrain is hilly and so forth.

A few years ago, we decided to go to Harpers Ferry, but stopped (I think for lunch) first in Brunswick MD, just a few miles short of our destination.  We had lunch at a delightful, converted old brick church, now a restaurant called Beans in the Belfry, looked at the railroad tracks and C & O Canal, and went to the railroad museum which contains, among other things, an exact model railroad showing the Baltimore and Ohio route between Brunswick and Washington’s Union Station. It’s absolutely worth a trip to see. Weekends only.

We got so involved in Brunswick that we never made it to Harpers Ferry.

Yesterday, we decided to try again. It was a cool day, was to be mainly cloudy, with a 25% chance of light and passing showers through a couple of hours. Buut when we arrived at the twin towns of Bolivar and Harpers Ferry, it was raining and it was unclear that it would stop, and we really didn’t want to get, so we drove out of town, decided to go a few more miles to Charles Town, have lunch (you see a pattern here?),  and see what the weather would be like in an hour or so.

All I really knew about Charles Town is that there is a race track there. We quickly learned there was a Walmart with an enormous parking lot and some Class B or Class C shopping strips. The few restaurants didn’t look particularly appealing, so we said (not the exact words and not in unison) “What the hell! Let’s just go to the Waffle House.” This would be a first.

The Waffle House was very crowded (we thought perhaps it’s the best restaurant in town). You couldn’t call the place clean exactly, and the five or six heavily accented women who worked there were having a grand old time amusing each other. The food was nothing to write a blog about, but the coffee was surprisingly good, the prices surprisingly low  and overall the place gets an A+ for friendliness. If you are ever lonely in Charles Town

and need a friendly smile….

Before going back to Harpers Ferry (and deep down knowing we would never go back), we decided to look more closely at Charles Town. Glad we did.

I didn’t take a lot of pictures, so you will have to take my words for it. The race track is visible from the road and looks to be in good shape. There are 9 or 10 racing days in September and the same next month. But next to the track is (ta-da) a casino open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and a large hotel featuring several restaurants and bars. I really didn’t know all that was here.

Charles Town also has a large historic section, with some beautiful old homes in a very pleasant and large neighborhood. It is a county seat and has the typical old government buildings, it has a live theater, a three story, well maintained old house that is now a used book and record store  restaurants and so forth.

While John Brown’s raid on the federal arsenal was at Harpers Ferry, he was jailed, tried, convicted and executed in Charles Town, and the sites are all appropriately marked. While Brown was not buried in Charles Town (he was buried in upstate NY), those killed in his raid were, and their graves can be visited in a large, well maintained cemetery.

Another thing I had never focused on, and still don’t fully understand. Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863. It freed the slaves in the rebellious states, not those that remained in the Union (i.e. not in the four “border states”. West Virginia did was still part of Virginia in January 1863. It did not become a separate breakaway state until June of that year.

But obviously, the movement to break away and return to the Union was in process. A historic sign says that the Emancipation Proclamation had special wording to except the future state of West Virginia out of its coverage, with one exception.  The slaves in Jefferson County (that is Charles Town’s county) were freed by Lincoln. This one needs a bit more research.

One ladt thing. Who was Charles of Charles Town? Charles was George Washington’s youngest brother whose estate (it is still in existence) was nearby. Charles Washington laid out the town. The main street is Washington. Other streets are named after the Washington brothers, George, Samuel, Charles, and Lawrence, and after Charles’ wife Mildred.

You ever imagine knowing so much about Charles Town WV?

No time to proof today……