Martinsburg Station
Near Harpers Ferry, West Virginia
The Martinsburg train station dates to eighteen forty-nine, making it one of the oldest surviving railroad stations in the United States. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad reached town in eighteen forty-two and immediately made Martinsburg its central maintenance hub between Baltimore and Cumberland, Maryland.
The Civil War brought everything crashing down. On May twenty-second, eighteen sixty-one, Stonewall Jackson's Confederate troops stopped every eastbound train from Martinsburg and then destroyed the tracks in both directions. Over the following weeks, they captured forty-two locomotives and three hundred eighty-six rail cars. The adjacent roundhouses and shops were burned to the ground in eighteen sixty-two. Martinsburg changed hands nearly forty times during the war.
After the war, the B and O rebuilt the complex, finishing in eighteen seventy-two. The restored eighteen forty-nine station building still stands today and continues to serve Amtrak passengers.
