From Fort to Community

After the Civil War, an African American community called The Fort developed across and within the remains of Fort Ward, creating a layered landscape in which former residents' homes stood throughout what is now Fort Ward Park, including atop preserved earthwork walls and near the fort's bombproof shelters. Cassius and Rachel McKnight purchased land there in 1890 and built their home within the preserved earthwork walls of Fort Ward, where they lived until Cassius's death in 1924, with a road to their property running along the fort's flat parade ground interior. Another resident, James Jackson, purchased 11.25 acres on what is now much of the west side of Fort Ward Park, where his home and a community cemetery were located in areas that today include part of the fort's restored Northwest bastion and glacis, the earthen slope surrounding the fort. In 2014, City of Alexandria archaeologists found the site of the Civil War fort's well, and while the well had been an essential water source for the army fort, excavations of its upper layers also uncovered artifacts discarded by Fort community residents, preserving evidence of daily life in the years after the war.

Alexandria, Virginia · United States