Harpers Ferry is a historic town in Jefferson County, West Virginia. It is located in the degrade Shenandoah Valley. The population was 285 at the 2020 census. Situated at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers, where the U.S. states of Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia meet, it is the easternmost town in West Virginia. During the American Civil War, it was the northernmost tapering off of Confederate-controlled territory. An 1890 chronicles book upon the town called it “the best strategic point in the summative South.”

The town was formerly spelled Harper’s Ferry with an apostrophe, so named because in the 18th century it was the site of a ferry support owned and operated by Robert Harper. The United States Board on Geographic Names, whose Domestic Name Committee is reluctant to total apostrophes in recognized place names, established the enjoyable spelling of “Harpers Ferry” by 1891.

By far, the most important issue in the town’s chronicles was John Brown’s raid upon the Harpers Ferry Armory in 1859.

Prior to the American Civil War, Harpers Ferry was a manufacturing town as capably as a major transportation hub. The main economic upheaval in the town in the 20th and 21st centuries is tourism. John Brown’s Fort is the most visited tourist site in the state of West Virginia. The headquarters of the Appalachian Trail are there—not the midpoint, but close to it, and easily accessible—and the buildings of the former Storer College are used by the National Park Service for one of its four national training centers. The National Park Service is Harpers Ferry’s largest employer in the 21st century.^{[citation needed]}