In 1861, Confederate soldiers under Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson tore up the tracks here. They didn't stop there. They burned the original B&O engine house to the ground and carried off the locomotives. But the railroad company came back quickly. By 1866, they hired engineer Albert Fink to build something tougher. He designed the iconic roundhouse using cast-iron columns and struts instead of wood. It still stands. Walk inside, and you will see a spiderweb of metal framing holding up a massive dome. It is actually the oldest surviving cast-iron frame roundhouse in the world. Quite a feat. Especially for a West Virginia town that changed hands dozens of times during the war.
This place wasn't just about heavy machinery. It was a pressure cooker. On July 16, 1877, the B&O cut worker wages by ten percent, their second pay cut in a year. The men had enough. They uncoupled the engines and refused to let any freight trains leave Martinsburg. This single act of defiance sparked the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, a massive national rebellion that shut down transportation across the country. Striking workers clashed with the local militia right on these brick-strewn tracks. Furious. Hostile. Eventually, President Rutherford B. Hayes sent federal troops to break the blockade. It marked the first time in American history that the US military intervened to stop a labor strike.
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