Harpers Ferry National Historical Park is most widely known today for the attempted slave revolt led by John Brown in 1859, the nucleus for the interpretation of the current national park. Here, Moyer and Shackel tell the behind-the-scenes story of how this event was chosen and preserved for commemoration, providing lessons for federal, state, local and non-profit organizations who continually struggle over the dilemma about which past to present to the public. Professional and non-professional audiences alike will benefit from their important insights into how federal agencies interpret the past, and in turn shape public memory.
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Editorial Reviews
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One of the finest park histories that I’ve read—thoughtful, original, fluidly written, meticulously researched. By juxtaposing three intertwined stories—history, archaeology, and interpretation—Moyer and Shackel explain how the quest for historical authenticity can give way to the creation of a fantastical parkscape. A superb case study on how 'history makes itself' and a model for future park histories. (R. Bruce Craig )
More than just a meticulously researched account of the creation of an iconic American park, the authors present a human story of contested meanings, good intentions, and power politics. Why did the National Park Service demolish most of the 19th-century architecture in Harpers Ferry? Who claimed that John Brown was a lunatic? And why was one of the first of the park's historians relegated to cleaning restrooms? Read on. (Praetzellis, Adrian )
This is the kind of thoughtful and provoking study of shifting policy and practice that every historic site needs. Moyer and Shackel have probed beneath the surface to analyze the changing treatment and presentation over time of a complex historic place at the confluence of two majestic rivers where events occurred that propelled Americans toward the Civil War. (Richard West Sellars )
How is history preserved, presented, and commemorated? In this book, Moyer and Shackel give us rare insight into the process of how a national park gets made. In the process we learn how the conflicting goals and differing perceptions of various stakeholders can cause the past to be changed over time. This is a superb example of multidisciplinary research at its finest, told with conviction and feeling. It's destined to become a standard text in classroom and field, and hopefully also in the halls of power. Those of us concerned about our vanishing cultural heritage need more books like this one. (Charles E. Orser, Jr. )
Teresa S. Moyer and Paul A. Shackel help us analyze the historical reality of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park through their careful examination of the National Park Service's restoration and interpretation of this historically important place. In so doing, they emphasize two topics shared by most historic sites: restoration philosophy and multiple histories. (Pitcaithley, Dwight )
Harpers Ferry is, to my mind, one of the most compelling historic sites in the nation. There are so many histories living in layer after layer of this place. Teresa S. Moyer and Paul A. Shackel excavate them in all their exquisite complexity, offering a model biography of a historic site. (Edward T. Linenthal )
A lovingly told story....The book is useful because it tells several neglected stories....A fine study. (April 2008 H-Net )
Moyer and Shackel skillfully uncover the site's many layers and illuminate both its strengths and limitations as a window on the past and as a canvas for changing NPS initiatives. (Journal Of Southern History, November 2008 )
The Making of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park is a fascinating book that is fully engaged with the present. The 'making' in the title highlights the importance of the recent past, present, and even the future in the author's perspectives. Moyer and Shackel have created a useable past by discussing the shortcomings of preservation and interpretation at the park . . . This book should be required reading for all cultural resource management professionals. (Material Culture )
More than just a meticulously researched account of the creation of an iconic American park, the authors present a human story of contested meanings, good intentions, and power politics. Why did the National Park Service demolish most of the 19th-century architecture in Harpers Ferry? Who claimed that John Brown was a lunatic? And why was one of the first of the park's historians relegated to cleaning restrooms? Read on. (Praetzellis, Adrian )
This is the kind of thoughtful and provoking study of shifting policy and practice that every historic site needs. Moyer and Shackel have probed beneath the surface to analyze the changing treatment and presentation over time of a complex historic place at the confluence of two majestic rivers where events occurred that propelled Americans toward the Civil War. (Richard West Sellars )
How is history preserved, presented, and commemorated? In this book, Moyer and Shackel give us rare insight into the process of how a national park gets made. In the process we learn how the conflicting goals and differing perceptions of various stakeholders can cause the past to be changed over time. This is a superb example of multidisciplinary research at its finest, told with conviction and feeling. It's destined to become a standard text in classroom and field, and hopefully also in the halls of power. Those of us concerned about our vanishing cultural heritage need more books like this one. (Charles E. Orser, Jr. )
Teresa S. Moyer and Paul A. Shackel help us analyze the historical reality of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park through their careful examination of the National Park Service's restoration and interpretation of this historically important place. In so doing, they emphasize two topics shared by most historic sites: restoration philosophy and multiple histories. (Pitcaithley, Dwight )
Harpers Ferry is, to my mind, one of the most compelling historic sites in the nation. There are so many histories living in layer after layer of this place. Teresa S. Moyer and Paul A. Shackel excavate them in all their exquisite complexity, offering a model biography of a historic site. (Edward T. Linenthal )
A lovingly told story....The book is useful because it tells several neglected stories....A fine study. (April 2008 H-Net )
Moyer and Shackel skillfully uncover the site's many layers and illuminate both its strengths and limitations as a window on the past and as a canvas for changing NPS initiatives. (Journal Of Southern History, November 2008 )
The Making of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park is a fascinating book that is fully engaged with the present. The 'making' in the title highlights the importance of the recent past, present, and even the future in the author's perspectives. Moyer and Shackel have created a useable past by discussing the shortcomings of preservation and interpretation at the park . . . This book should be required reading for all cultural resource management professionals. (Material Culture )
About the Author
Teresa S. Moyer is a research assistant in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Maryland at College Park, where she received her MAA in 2002. She is currently a PhD candidate in American studies. Paul A. Shackel is professor of anthropology at the University of Maryland at College Park and director of the Center for Heritage Resource Studies. Previously, he was employed as an archaeologist at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
The politics of history in Harpers Ferry,
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This review is from: The Making of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park: A Devil, Two Rivers, and a Dream (American Association for State and Local History) (Hardcover)
Though it's just a small town, Harpers Ferry, West Virginia has a big history. It was the site of John Brown's Raid in 1859, changed hands multiple times in the Civil War, and was the home of an early normal school (later Storer College) for freedpersons, in addition to having an industrial history at the US Armory representing the shift from craft to factory. Much of that history is contentious: slavery and abolition, labor history and industrial relations, Jim Crow and segregation. It's not surprising, then, that Harpers Ferry National Historic Park has attracted more than its fair share of political interventions, chronicled in this book. One of the most notorious was a monument to the memory of Heyward Shepherd by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and Sons of Confederate Veterans. Shepherd was a free black railroad worker who was killed in Brown's Raid, but the monument recast him as representative of the slaves who stayed loyal to their owners through the Civil War. Not surprisingly, the NAACP and other groups fought the monument, and the NPS handled this political hot potato rather poorly for fifty years. As that story suggests, the National Park Service at HFNHP has confronted decisions about whether to tell a single story based on 1856-1862, or to tell many stories about multiple time periods as well as different racial and class perspectives on history. Mostly by accident, HFNHP has also become a laboratory and training center for national park interpretation, and it houses the Harpers Ferry Center for interpretation. This book tells these various stories quite well. It's more descriptive than I'd like. A good first and last chapter help frame the stories, and I would have preferred similar framing in each chapter. It's an academic book more than a popular one, but if you like this kind of thing you will find the book an interesting and informative read.
4.0 out of 5 stars
National Park Service critique,
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This review is from: The Making of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park: A Devil, Two Rivers, and a Dream (American Association for State and Local History) (Paperback)
The Making of Harpers Ferry National Park is a solid overview of the development of a historical site and shifting tides of park management practices. The occasional political sermons, however, are gratuitous.
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