Archeology at the US Armory

The U.S. Armory at Harpers Ferry ca. 1862. The Warehouse and the Smith and Forging Shop are the first and second buildings on the right. “John Brown's Fort” is the first building on the left.

NPS photo.

What does the National Park Service do when a park acquires a new piece of property? Part of the Service’s responsibility is to take inventory of resources. When six acres of the former Armory were added to Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia, the park acquired not only the original site of John Brown’s Fort but also the archeological remains of other important structures including the Wager Warehouse and the Smith and Forging Shop. Archeologists surveyed, tested, and mapped these important resources.

The Harpers Ferry NHP Archeology Program completed two multi-year archeological investigations at the location of the Harpers Ferry National Armory. The first project was conducted from 2005-2007 and focused on investigating the locations of the Warehouse and Smith and Forging Shop. The second project spanned from 2011-2012 and investigated archeological deposits beneath the Armory Street and waterpower features associated with the Armory. These projects led to two published reports, and an expanded understanding of the history of both the Armory and the pre-European contact (precontact) indigenous inhabitants of the area.

For nearly 65 years, between 1799 and 1861, factories at Harpers Ferry made the nation's weapons. During the time of its operation, weapons manufacturing at Harpers Ferry Armory evolved from a craft-oriented process to a system of mass production of interchangeable parts. The archeological investigations provided a tremendous opportunity to learn about 19th century manufacturing in general, and arms production in particular.

Project Background

In 2001, the NPS acquired title to six acres of land along the Potomac River where a portion of the Armory, known as the Musket Factory, once stood. This tract of land included the original site of “John Brown's Fort,” where Brown and his supporters took refuge during their ill-fated uprising in 1859. John Brown's Fort, emblematic of the town and its history, was originally constructed as an Armory building.

With the acquisition of the property came the responsibility to inventory the site's cultural resources and interpret them in a meaningful and informative way. To meet these responsibilities, the Archeology Program at Harpers Ferry NHP initiated a three-year research project that focused on the Armory buildings known to be in the area, followed by another two-year research project to expand on some of the findings of the first, including the Armory waterpower infrastructure and intact precontact objects found during the first three-year period.

Indigenous History

The area around Harpers Ferry has been occupied for at least 10,000 years. The earliest known occupation of Harpers Ferry dates to what is known as the Archaic period. Stone spear points from this period have been found in deeply buried soils along both the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers, as well as in upland areas nearby. Both pottery and arrowheads that date to the Woodland period, along with hearths and post hole features, have also been identified within the park. Some of these artifacts date to the period of initial European colonization. The precontact history of the park is only generally understood currently, but there is evidence of people having lived there for millennia.

History of the Armory

The Armory was established at Harpers Ferry in 1798. The site was selected personally by President George Washington over the strong objections of several of his advisors. The first guns were made at the Armory in 1801. Some of the equipment for the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1803 was made or requisitioned from the Armory.

Like John Brown’s Fort, another armory building of historic significance is the “Wager Warehouse,” a 100-foot-long frame building that predates the Armory. It was originally a part of Robert Harper's 18th-century ferrying business on the Potomac River. Later, it was converted to a temporary workshop where arms were re-conditioned. Later still, it was converted to living quarters for the Armory superintendent. The building was dismantled in 1809, but maps show that it stood near the east edge of the Musket Factory Yard. One of the goals of the first Harpers Ferry archeological inventory project was to identify archeological resources relating to this building.

Two major expansions were made to the armory facilities. The first expansion occurred from 1808 to 1810 in preparation for the War of 1812. At that time, the number of workshops in the Musket Factory increased from 5 to 12. A second row of factory buildings was added on the river's edge and a 70-foot-wide street was built in between the two rows of workshops. The number of Armory workers increased from twenty in 1798 to almost two hundred in 1810. By the mid-1820s, the site was a full-fledged industrial center.

The second major expansion to the physical plant of the Armory began in the early 1840s. Like the construction program three decades earlier, the 1840s-era expansion was also a great period of change at the Armory. By the 1840s, most of the buildings were in poor condition and were no longer adequate for their intended use. The Army's Chief of Ordnance wrote, “The strongest necessity exists for the improvement of the public buildings at Harper's Ferry Armory—they are at present exceedingly unsightly and unworthy of a National Establishment...”

The Superintendent of the Armory, who also happened to be a talented engineer, resolved to fix the problems, and totally renovate the armory's architecture. He insisted that all new buildings be well-designed, built of the best materials, and of good workmanship. Settling on a Gothic architectural style that featured crenellated gable ends and distinctive arches, he achieved an architectural and functional unity that the Armory had previously lacked. In all, 25 new buildings were constructed during the building program that began in the 1840s and lasted into the 1850s.

Harpers Ferry in the Civil War

Harpers Ferry witnessed one of the earliest acts associated with the Civil War. On the night of October 16th, 1859, the abolitionist John Brown and a band of 21 men raided the Armory's arsenal, intending to seize weapons and spark a slave revolt. The raiders easily overpowered the Armory watchman and captured the arsenal, taking hostages in the process.

A group of Marines under the command of Robert E. Lee arrived during the night of October 17, and Brown and his followers were soon captured. Brown's trial, conviction, and death by hanging, perceived by many as an act of martyrdom, polarized the nation on the eve of the Civil War.

When the Civil War did break out, the residents of Harpers Ferry and Armory workforce found themselves uncomfortably on the border between North and South. As Confederate forces advanced on the Armory in April 1861, Federal soldiers set fire to the arsenals and some workshops, and then abandoned the town. The townspeople and armory workers, not wanting to see their livelihoods go up in flames, worked quickly to extinguish the fires before too much damage was done. Much valuable machinery and tools were saved. A short time later the machinery and tools were confiscated by Confederate soldiers and shipped elsewhere to aid Confederate efforts. Eventually, some of the shops were partially refurbished and used as a Quartermasters Depot to support military operations, including Major General Sheridan's 1864 Shenandoah Valley campaign.

After the Civil War ended, the federal government abandoned the premises and the property was allowed to deteriorate. Floods ravaged the grounds; building materials, particularly bricks and cut stone, were scavenged and used for other building projects in the region.

The Armory site passed into private hands in 1868 and, in 1892, the last remnant of the Armory, the large brick chimney of the Smith and Forging Shop, was torn down. In 1894, the B&O Railroad realigned its track and constructed an earth and rubble embankment that covered the main entrance to the former Musket Factory Yard, the original site of John Brown's Fort, and most of the workshops and canal. In 1916, to help promote Harpers Ferry as a tourist destination, the railroad company landscaped the former Armory grounds and planted trees and ornamental shrubs and established flower beds. They also took steps to interpret the site by installing wayside signs and built false foundation outlines to show the locations of the Armory buildings.

In 1931, the Harpers Ferry train station was relocated from a spot slightly downstream to its current location, which necessitated the enlargement of the fill embankment covering the former Armory site, and further obscured the locations of historic buildings. By the time that Harpers Ferry National Monument was established by Congress in 1944, the Armory site had reverted to a natural state. By 1980, it was completely covered with trees and underbrush. It remained that way, largely undisturbed, until the NPS acquired the property in 2001.

Results of the 2005-2007 Field Seasons

The archeological investigations, which began in April 2005, revealed significant information about the archeological potential of the Armory site. By the end of the project in 2007 a total of 2,300 square-feet of the site was excavated across 75 excavation units and several larger trenches. The majority were contiguous, to achieve a size that permitted a full view of the specific feature under study, though several were placed outside of these larger blocks to investigate specific external areas. The larger block excavations also provided space to reach a sufficient depth in the fill-laden site to record the site's stratigraphy, often as deep as four to five feet below the surface.

Study during the 2005-2007 field seasons centered upon the area once covered by two buildings: the Warehouse, erected in 1841; and the Smith and Forging Shop, built 1845 to 1848. At both building sites, excavations were focused on key architectural features, primarily the intersections of foundation walls. A herringbone-patterned brick floor in the inspector's office portion of the Smith and Forging Shop was uncovered during excavation. Features related to the mechanical workings of the building identified included a brick-lined trench that housed gearing and shafting, as well as a flue that supplied air to the workshop's double row of forges. Excavations also explored the area where a massive 90'-tall smokestack once stood. The exact locations and dimensions of both buildings and their interior features were recorded in the first year, which were used when the site was revisited in the subsequent field seasons.

Excavations at the Warehouse revealed several architectural features. The remains of a fire suppression system were documented near the southwest corner of the building, installed during the second phase of expansion at the Armory in the mid-nineteenth century. Identified components of the fire system included part of an 1850s cast iron fire hydrant, a lightning rod, and a carved stone splash guard or spout stone.

Tens of thousands of artifacts were collected during the excavations. The artifacts span the entire occupational history of the site, including items from the precontact period through modern periods. Among the notable finds was a cache of 75 to 100 three-piece, long-range rear sights for the U.S. Model 1855 rifle in a small deposit at the corner of the warehouse. Several tools used by armorers in the gun-making process were also recovered, including rasping files, a wrench that was made from a broken file, and inspector's stamps. The inspector examined each weapon and, if it was of sufficient quality, he stamped either the metal or the wood of the gun using a mallet and a stamp.

Other unusual artifacts include a piece of china from a plate commissioned to commemorate the founding of the B&O Railroad and an apothecary's weight, used to measure out medicine on a scale. Several concentrations of Civil War-era artifacts were recovered, including various types of ammunition, primer caps, friction primers, hardware from uniforms, knapsacks, and tents, horse tack and bridle hardware, and gaming pieces used for gambling. These artifacts are evidence of the extensive usage of the site during the war.

In addition to the historic period artifacts, precontact pottery and stone artifacts were recovered from several excavation units. Some of these appeared to be concentrated in intact stratigraphy beneath the former location of Potomac Street that ran past the Armory grounds, suggesting that more intact precontact layers may be in the vicinity. This would become a focus of future investigations in 2011-2012.

Results of the 2011-2012 Field Seasons

During the 2005-2007 field seasons of the Harpers Ferry Armory Archaeological Project, several unexpected discoveries were made. Among the most important was that there are intact soils beneath the Lower Armory Grounds Street that include precontact artifacts and layers that correspond with the earliest Armory periods. These early layers were expected to have been destroyed by later historic landscape modification, but the presence of the road led to their preservation. The goals of the 2011-2012 archaeological investigations were to gain a better understanding of these periods and of the original landscape before it was modified during Armory construction. To this end, two blocks encompassing 200 square feet were excavated up to 10 feet deep. Additionally, one of the eight Armory tailraces, where water was moved between the canal and the river to power the machinery in the buildings, was explored and mapped in detail.

Nearly 500 precontact artifacts were recovered from the excavations. These included pottery sherds, stone tools, and the byproducts of stone tool production. All the artifacts were carefully analyzed, including specialized analyses such as protein residue, pollen, and phytolith analysis. The artifacts dated from the end of the Archaic period through to Late Woodland and European Contact periods. Results from the specialized analyses revealed that some of the pottery was used for boiling maize, an early form of corn, and that some of the stone tools were used for fishing. However, no habitation features that would indicate a long-term occupation were found. These artifacts may be related to a precontact settlement on the Shenandoah River side of the park.

Excavation beneath the street and documentation of the historic tailrace shed light on the early days of the Armory construction, in the beginning of the nineteenth century. Multiple construction episodes were observed, indicating that the canal and tailraces were modified during the earliest Armory construction multiple times. Many features related to the above ground armory buildings were identified within the tailrace tunnel, such as bridge remnants from when the raceways were open. These findings highlight the complicated history of the Armory and its structures.

Historic artifacts recovered from the excavations helped to refine our understanding of the firearm production process and provided physical evidence of objects that were formerly only poorly understood from historic documentation, such as gun flint caps and front sight sprues. Much of the process for making the smaller workings of these rifles, such as the sights, is poorly documented and understood, and this physical evidence helps to improve our understanding of these processes. The excavations also highlighted that the byproducts of the manufacturing process were extremely common and presented a problem of waste disposal to the early armorers. This scrap metal and slag were often used in construction projects and were dumped near the Armory buildings throughout the early years of its operation.

Ultimately, both the 2005-2007 field efforts and the 2011-2012 investigations provided valuable information about the precontact and historic periods at the Lower Armory Grounds. However, additional questions remain, including whether there are yet more deeply buried precontact deposits, how the Canal and its raceways were constructed and modified over time, and whether waste materials were more often recycled or simply discarded at the Armory. These questions may potentially be addressed by further work in the park, such as additional historical research, additional excavations, further mapping projects, or ground-penetrating radar survey. The work performed during the two phases of excavation has laid a rich groundwork for further research.

In all their activities, the archeologists at Harpers Ferry NHP were dedicated to keeping the NPS commitment to responsible management of the cultural resources on the lands that it administers.