Maryland Daily PhotoEvery Week Day a New Picture from MD

In case you are wondering why there was no President’s Day issue of MDDP, its becasue even though some people don’t feel like you should take off in honor of the Presidents of the United States, MDDP does feel like you should.    What I did on President’s day (during my lunch hour) was visit this site.  I later composed the text below, but I’ve had so many things to post, we’re just getting to it now. 

Many of the area’s forts came into and out of service within the same century.  One fort stands out as a location that, due to its geography, was built, destroyed, rebuilt, refurbished, and then reused between the early 1800’s and the mid twentieth century. 

That fort is Fort Washington, located in PG county along the Potomac, just opposite Mt. Vernon.  

The Fort was never used during the battle of 1812.  As the British Army made their way through PG county to take DC, the Navy sailed up the Potomac to take Alexandria, VA.  The commander of the fort at the time (then called Ft. Warburton) burned the fort rather than have it taken by the British. 

The brick structure you see was constructed starting less than a month after that.  By 1824 it was finished, though the original architect (Pierre L’enfant) was fired and it was finished and built by Walker Armistead.  

Later, during the civil war you can imagine the position that the Army was in as they decided what to do with the fort.  It was unused for most of the time leading up to the war, but it had guns that faced Virginia and it backed onto a county known to be filled with southern sympathizers.   Eventually it was manned by the Army and then Marines, though its significance as a protector of DC diminished as the Army built new forts around the district. 

Then in the 1880’s concrete weapon embankments similar to these  were placed along the outsides of the 1824 fort. 

During the Spanish American war, this fort actually commanded the mine fields that were laid in the Potomac, as unbelievable as that may be for us to think about today.  

Finally some of the guns were taken away as the First World War was waged so that they could be placed further south along the bay in Virginia and other locations.  In the 1940’s it was turned into a officer training school during WWII.  

Today it is a park, and quite a beautiful one too.   It certainly commands one of the best views there is of the Potomac south of DC. 

This entry was posted on Monday, February 25th, 2008 at 11:46 PM and is filed under Prince Georges. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.