White Hall Tavern, aka Roeder's Tavern, in Harper's Ferry National Historical Park/NPS

This coming weekend, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, you can experience a Historic Bread and Baked Goods Sale sponsored by the Harpers Ferry Park Association at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia.

The public is invited to purchase fresh baked sourdough, leaven rolls or street corner food, and large soft pretzels — just to name a few varieties. All will be baked in a large masonry “beehive oven” near the historic Roeder’s Tavern. All proceeds directly benefit Harpers Ferry National Historical Park.

Bread, called the “stuff of life,” was made locally by bakers and confectioners like German immigrant Frederick Roeder. Bread baking was well established in the town by 1809, when Harpers Ferry boating merchant John Wager Jr. began a flour shipping business from Harpers Ferry mills into the federal city 60 miles away.

Harpers Ferry, then in Jefferson County, Virginia, was part of the early republic breadbasket that fed the bigger cities with local grain and flour. Local flour production and bread on the table proved the town on two rivers was no longer the frontier, but civilized. The citizens no longer needed to hunt, kill, or gather to achieve each meal. At its height, 20,000 barrels of flour were staged along the Shenandoah River for shipping downriver.

By mid-century, in addition to a daily bread, most households over the course of a year consumed an array of baked goods made from hard and soft wheat, today’s equivalent of “all-purpose flour”: “34 loaves of bread, 17- 6 quart pans of doughnuts, 17 messes of biscuits, 94 pies, 7 loaf cakes, 1 ½ dozen tart crusts, 3 dozen gingersnaps, and one mess of pancakes.”