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Great Cacapon is a census-designated place (CDP) in Morgan County in the U.S. state of West Virginia's Eastern Panhandle. As of the 2010 census, its population was 386. The town developed primarily after its establishment as a depot on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad around 1842, during the railroad's expansion from Harper's Ferry, West Virginia to Cumberland, Maryland. It lies four miles down Cacapon Mountain from the Panorama Overlook along Cacapon Road (West Virginia Route 9) west of Berkeley Springs.

Name
Great Cacapon takes its name from the (Great) Cacapon River, which empties into the Potomac River to the town's east. Cacapon (and its variants such as Cacapehon, Cackapehon, or Capon ) are said to be of various Native American linguistic origins. One etymology maintains the name refers to "medicine water" in the Shawnee language, while another ascribes it to a word meaning "to appear" or "to rise to view." When a post office was established in 1848, it was named Cacapon Depot, and this has lead some to suppose the village itself was named that until 1876, when the post office's name was changed to Great Cacapon to differentiate it from Little Cacapon. However, the B&O Railroad depot had already been referred to as Great Cacapon from the outset in 1842. Confusing matters though, in the late 1840s and early 1850s, the alternative name of Bruce's Depot was also used for the site of the B&O at the river's mouth. Throughout the 19th century, the river, bridge and B&O depot were also sometimes referred to as Big Cacapon.

Early History
Because of this relationship with Washington's early career, the town is included as a stop on the Washington Heritage Trail.

Significant development of the area began when it found itself as one site of the rival developments of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (C&O), which would link the region to their termini at Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, D.C. respectively. The C&O was the first to arrive, having already reached Dam No. 5 near Marlowe by 1835, and advancing west over the next several years. The canal finally reached a point across the Potomac from the area of Great Cacapon by 1839, establishing its Dam No. 6. The canal to this point was watered in April of the same year. Since the Potomac river from this point to Cumberland was navigable, large amounts of Appalachian coal were expected to begin flowing to Washington. The area around Great Cacapon thereby found itself at a profitable confluence of this predicted flow of goods on the Potomac and that coming down the Cacapon River.

Meanwhile, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, due to legal conflicts with the C&O, had been detained at Point of Rocks, Maryland for several years. The Cacapon River trade was expected to be valuable enough that the B&O's planners argued the railroad ought to be built on its side (the Virginia bank) of the Potomac, in order to best access its resources. After crossing the Potomac at Harpers Ferry in 1837, the B&O quickly caught up with and overtook the canal at Great Cacapon, moving ahead to complete its line from Baltimore to Cumberland in 1842. As part of this extension, the railroad established a depot at the western side of the bridge it had built across the Cacapon, naming it for the same river, Great Cacapon. A post office was subsequently established at the depot in 1848.

Civil War outbreak
When the American Civil War reached Virginia in May 1861, Great Cacapon's depot was part of more than one hundred miles of the B&O's track, mainly the sections on the Virginia side of the Potomac, that was occupied by Confederate forces, between Point of Rocks and Cumberland. On June 13 of that same year, the 265-foot wooden bridge over the Cacapon was burned, one of 23 to be destroyed along the line.

Realizing the need to reopen this central line between Washington and the western states, Union troops set out from Cumberland in an attempt to regain control of the lines west in November, 1861. By December, the full distance was under the Union's control, and the bridges at Little & Great Cacapon were rebuilt.

Battle of Hancock
As 1862 began, a Federal garrison was stationed at the town to protect the depot and lines. The garrison was part of the District of Harpers Ferry & Cumberland of the Army of the Potomac, commanded by General Frederick W. Lander. Almost immediately this garrison was tested by Maj. Gen. Stonewall Jackson's Romney Expedition, during the Battle of Hancock, in which the Confederate general attempted to disrupt traffic on both the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, as well as the Chesapeake & Ohio canals. At this time, two Union Companies (E & G) of the 39th Illinois Infantry Regiment, and Company F of 2nd Maryland Infantry, Potomac Home Brigade, under Capt. L. F. Dyche were stationed at Great Cacapon bridge.

Jackson had set out from Winchester, Virginia on the 1st of January, 1862 with about 10,000 men. The Union forces at Great Cacapon had had some advance warning of their approach however, as their reconnaissance units on Cacapon Mountain had observed the approach of what they believed to be about 3,000 Confederate troops in the valley near Warm Spring Mountain on the afternoon of January 3, 1862. This caused them to extend their pickets and order the garrison to sleep with their weapons. The next day, Saturday, January 4, the city of Bath (modern Berkeley Springs) was occupied by the Confederates as they advanced north. Bath had been the Union's forward position, and so they now fell back across the Potomac, leaving the bridge and garrison at Great Cacapon exposed.

While the primary action of Jackson's campaign now was a bombardment of Hancock from across the river, a detachment of Confederate units under Colonel William S. Baylor simultaneously moved on Great Cacapon from the Bath road to the east. Expecting attack was also possible from the south via the Bloomery Gap, the units of the Potomac Home Brigade took up concealed positions along the bluffs of the Great Cacapon, as well as the Long Hollow Run, while the two Companies of the 39th Illinois set about building breastworks of timber and railroad ties and preparing the defenses of the bridge proper.

defended their position for several hours.

The Union troops, unable to ford the Potomac, instead retreated up the railroad to Green Spring Run.

The Union guard having been driven off, the Confederate troops destroyed the new trestle bridge over the Cacapon, the B&O depot and the telegraph relay. Across the bridge, the road east to Bath was likewise "rendered unusable" by the raiders Simultaneously, they attempted to blow up Dams No. 5 & 6 of the C&O, and to drain it by digging trenches into its banks.

Later Civil War
The destruction of the bridge had immediate strategic implications for Lander, as it prevented him from communicating with a second Union force, commanded by General Alpheus S. Williams, located three miles to the west of Hancock. This inability kept Lander from a planned coordination to cut off Jackson's withdrawal back into Virginia. The burning of the bridge was also regionally significant, since it fully halted mail service, which was dependent on regular rail traffic, between Cumberland and points east. Seeing its necessity and needing to continue to conduct military operations back and forth across the river, Union forces had quickly built a pontoon bridge across the Great Cacapon by mid-February, 1862 and were at work on restoring the rail bridge, which too was finished by month's end. At this point, the depot and town was occupied by soldiers of the 62nd Ohio Infantry under Colonel F.B. Pond.

By April, 1862, full rail service had been restored restored, and the B&O was advertising that freight service was again available to Great Cacapon, but owing to the precarious situation at it and similarly-positioned stations, they advised that such freight would be delivered only at the "owner's entire risk of safe delivery" of the cargo as soon as it left the train's hold. Protecting the depot and the restored line was now a portion of the "Cambria Regiment," the 54th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, as well as four companies of the 1st Maine Volunteer Cavalry Regiment. Determined guards notwithstanding, the B&O's reopening at Great Cacapon was short-lived, as the replacement trestle bridge was again destroyed, this time by the freshet floods which swept the area in June, 1862.

Great Cacapon would next see military action in June 1863, when troops under Confederate General John D. Imboden, following immediately upon the conclusion of his part in the Jones–Imboden Raid in the preceding months, entered the town after withdrawing from a Cumberland. Imboden's units destroyed a number of B&O bridges, including the one at Great Cacapon. Approximately 3,000 Confederate soldiers encamped in the vicinity of Great Cacapon, but although Union forces under General Benjamin Franklin Kelley moved west to give battle with them there, Imboden's troops departed to the east, to participate in the Battle of Gettysburg. After the Confederate defeat up north, however, "Imboden and other notorious raiders" returned, and continued to harass Union depots in the county, according to a soldier's report from Great Cacapon in December 1863.

After being set ablaze so many times in just a few years, the most recent incarnation of Great Cacapon's bridge would survive the Civil War, but not by long. Weakened first by the loss of six trestles from a sudden rise in the Potomac in February 1865, it was finally destroyed by yet another freshet in May of the same year. It would not be fully restored until October.

Post-war development


With the start of 1866 and the newfound stability of the area in peacetime, speculators began looking to encourage a timber industry at the Great Cacapon. Introduction of new industry came with some growing pains however: in April, the boiler of the town's saw mill exploded, killing several people. Nevertheless, the development of the industry continued, with the Big Cacapon Lumber & Boom Company being established in 1871. Perhaps bolstered by Great Cacapon's growing lumber interests, the cargo trade at the B&O depot itself was also lucrative, bringing in $2,620.91 in taxes from the railroad to the town in 1871 alone. At the end of June, 1876, the United States Postal Service officially brought the name of their post office (until this point named "Cacapon Depot") in line with the commonly-used name of the B&O station, town and river.

Beyond light industry, Great Cacapon was increasingly finding itself a popular tourist destination. The river's fishing was described at the time as "unsurpassed;" and advertisements boasted of the area's hunting opportunities for pheasants, wild turkey and deer. The town's closeness to the already popular resort town of Berkeley Springs meant that vacationers there would often make the trip west to Great Cacapon as well. Tourists from more urbanized places like Baltimore frequently would make the trip out via the B&O.

Great Cacapon also benefited from its close proximity to the Woodmont Rod & Gun Club, which owned 3,500 acres directly across the Potomac from the rail depot and catered to a wealthy and influential clientele. The club had special arrangement with the B&O to provide its affluent members with half-price fare from Washington, D.C. to the Great Cacapon station, allowing them to make day trips for "a good afternoon's gunning or fishing," before returning back to D.C. on the evening's train. Eminent people of the time were drawn to the area, such as President Chester A. Arthur, who traveled to Great Cacapon en route to the Club in 1882. President Grover Cleveland followed in 1852. When these Presidents visited, they were lodged in Great Cacapon in the home of the Senatorial Fishing Club's agent & superintendent, based in the town. This agent, Charles Muhlenberg, had many roles in the town, as he was also the town's Postmaster, and his family owned the general store. After Muhlenberg's 1886 death, his widow, Annie Muhlenberg, assumed all of these positions, appointed as a female Postmaster in 1886, and reappointed in 1897.

As the century drew to a close, business development at Great Cacapon continued. Local businessmen formed a Cacapon Improvement Association in 1896, and made plans for a Cacapon Hotel Company. A spoke and handle company and a canning company were announced in 1897. There were setbacks too, however: the town's growing clout was still insufficient to convince the Morgan county legislature to pay for a new iron bridge (to replace the oft-destroyed wooden ones) across the river. Even worse, in October 1895, the town's large Price Nolan sawmill burned down, and four years later, the Noland & Kidwell flour mill did the same.

20th Century
In 1904, developers began to explore the possibility of harnessing the Cacapon River for hydroelectric power. A dam erected near Great Cacapon generated electric power, which was transported by the new Great Cacapon Power Company to light nearby Hancock. By this time, the town numbered between 300 to 400 people.

December 1904

The smallpox outbreak thought to have been introduced by immigrant workers

spread to homes near (but not in) neighboring Paw-Paw, but did not reach Berkeley Springs due to the then-difficult mountain route separating the two towns

armed guards prevented anyone from leaving

In March of that year, while the quarantine was still in effect, nearly every window in Great Cacapon was shattered by a shock wave, caused by blasting as part of the westward expansion of the Western Maryland Railway across the Potomac. The same shock wave also shattered the windows of a passing B&O rail car.

A fire in October, 1906 destroyed the Morgan Canning Company's factory as well as a neighboring blacksmith.

In 1909, the Hydro-Electric Development Company of Great Cacapon was established to provide electricity to Hampshire and Morgan counties. The company announced plans to build four 4,000 horsepower turbines to generate hydroelectric power at nearby Edes Fort for this purpose.

Like nearby towns of Burnt Factory and Berkeley Springs, Great Cacapon was the site of several sand mining operations. In 1920, these operations included the Harbison-Walker Refractories Company and the Hazel-Atlas Glass Company.

Conservation
The Nature Conservancy and the Potomac Valley Audubon Society jointly operate the 354-acre Eidolon Nature Preserve