Point Reno, the highest point in Washington at 409 feet above sea level, brought the Civil War to Tenleytown. After the Union defeat at Bull Run in July 1861, northern troops took the Dyer farm there to establish Fort Pennsylvania, clearing the farmhouse, orchards, fields, and, as neighbor Ann Forrest Green noted with alarm, "every particle of poultry." Renamed in 1863 to honor Major General Jesse Lee Reno, the fort was one of 68 built to protect the city. In the summer of 1864, Confederate forces knew it as one of the city's strongest defenses, with long-range cannons and a signal tower visible for miles. On the morning of July 11, 1864, President Lincoln visited the fort. Later that day, lookouts saw Confederate troops advancing from the north; some moved along Rockville Road, while most headed along Seventh Street Road toward the apparently weaker Fort Stevens, three miles to the northeast. The broiling heat delayed Confederate General Jubal Early's attack, giving defenders time to reinforce Fort Stevens. Meanwhile, cavalry from the fort engaged the advancing enemy a few blocks north, with both sides suffering casualties, and the fort's cannons shelled the enemy nearly four miles away. Early's forces lost the Battle of Fort Stevens, the only Civil War engagement fought in the District of Columbia. About 30 years later, the city erased the fort's remnants when it built an underground water reservoir, whose red-brick tower, actually a water tank, became a Tenleytown landmark visible from Virginia.