George Washington established an armory and arsenal at Harpers Ferry in 1794

George Washington, who was at the time a prosperous landowner, went to Harpers Ferry in 1794. Washington chose the town as the location for a new national armory after being impressed by its setting at the meeting of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers and the town's natural beauty, which Thomas Jefferson had called "worth a voyage across the Atlantic for."

From Robert Harper's heirs, the federal government acquired a 125-acre (0.5 km2) plot of land in 1796. In 1799, work on Harpers Ferry's future home of the United States Armory and Arsenal got under way. Although it is the same building, it is referred to locally as both "the armory" and "the arsenal." Only two such facilities were present in the country; the first one was located in Springfield, Massachusetts. They produced the majority of the U.S. Army's small guns together. The community became a hub for water-powered industry. More than 600,000 muskets, rifles, and pistols were made there between 1801 and 1861, when the armory was demolished to prevent capture during the American Civil War.