Harpers Ferry Main • Tour the Battlefield > Lower Town
The A Perfect Heap of Ruins wayside marker is in the Lower Town of Harpers Ferry in the ruins of the Armory.
From the marker:
A Perfect Heap of Ruins
Standing here on the night of April 18, 1861, you would have seen billowing smoke as fire raged in the armory workshops upstream. Virginia had just seceded from the United States and Virginia militiamen were advancing on the armory. Vastly outnumbered and unable to defend the armory, U.S. soldiers “set fire to the Carpenter shop & grinding mill, Stocking shop, & the 2 arsenals” leaving the buildings in a “perfect heap of ruins,” wrote a local resident. Arriving after the Federals retreated and the fire had consumed most of the 15,000 rifles stored in the arsenal, the Virginia Militia later stripped the armory of its valuable machinery. An Armory worker lamented the destruction of the armory “Our armory is burnt and we have no money and no nothing else.”
The armory never operated again.
Caption from the inset photo:
Civil War-era artifacts excavated here reveal heavy use of the armory site by U.S. soldiers throughout the war. They left behind many items like (clockwise above): eagle breast plate, bullets, uniform insignia, U.S. buckle, bugle mouthpiece.
Caption from the background image:
U.S. Soldiers abandon the armory after setting it on fire.
Location of the marker
The A Perfect Heap of Ruins wayside marker is in the Lower Town of Harpers Ferry. It is in the ruins of the Armory about 75 yards north of the intersection of Shenandoah and Potomac Streets. (39°19’25.8″N 77°43’46.6″W)