Virginius Island Waterpowered Mill Complex, North bank of Shenandoah River 0.5 mile from confluence with Potomac River, Harpers Ferry, Jefferson County, WV

Significance: Virginius Island is significant because it is representative of nineteenth-century water-powered industry, the type which initially kindled America's Industrial Revolution. The Island's first industry, a saw mill, was established in 1824 by Lewis Wernwag. For the next one hundred years, despite devastating flooding and the Civil War, Virginius Island remained a center of industry. Later Island industries included tanneries, flour mills, cotton mills, machine shop, iron foundry, and a pulp mill, the last mill to operate on the Island. Today only ruins of these industries remain: the canal headgates, the intake tunnels, the large and small cotton mills, the siltation basins, and vestiges of the power canal.
Survey number: HAER WV-83