780. Charles Town, Jefferson County (WV01)

Oh, West Virginia!

On a certain level, I was happy to add another Jefferson County to my ever–growing list of them. On another level, this was a slightly different kind of courthouse than the ones I’d seen before. I think a lot of courthouses I’d seen, especially ones in the Midwest, were trying for a certain grandiosity, trying to create legitimacy with size and ornamentation. This one had a simplicity that undergirded its ancient and venerable beginnings. I approved. That said, there were many caches I could have gotten around Charles Town, but another place in the county called to me for a visit. Sitting at the confluence of the Potomac and the Shenandoah Rivers, I was drawn to one of the most infamous places in the United States: Harpers Ferry.

For those of you who were sick on that day in history class, Harpers Ferry was the site of the US Armory and Arsenal that, in 1859, was captured by my favorite fighting abolitionist, John Brown, in an attempt to start a slave rebellion. The rebellion failed, and Brown was arrested, tried, and executed for murder, treason, and inciting slave insurrection. I walked the streets with my friends, knowing it all happened in these buildings. Of course, we needed a cache, so we went to the town cemetery (there always is one) overlooking the town and the rivers. The cache itself was nothing special, a cap-and-cap in a stone wall, but the view was stunning. The three of us (Razorbackgirl, Godot, and I) began working on a Virtual there as we waited for the others to arrive. And when they did, we found out what they had gone off and done: they had attended an Event in the next county over that ended up being attended by WVTim! I was envious, but I had made my choice and was happy with it. We all then went about grabbing Adventure Labs. We also attempted the Letterbox Hybrid, though we never found it.

We went on beyond sunset, grabbing other caches in and around Harpers Ferry until we all needed to go. We had a long night ahead of us and a bit of a timetable to keep. We left, this time returning east, for…