Fort Howard

The British attack at North Point in 1814, when 4000 troops landed and gunboats moved up the Patapsco River to attack Fort McHenry, left Baltimore mindful of how vulnerable coastal cities were to attack by sea. After America’s coast defenses had become obsolete, Congress created a board in 1885 to identify poorly defended port cities and recommend improvements, though full funding took another decade. By 1898, construction moved forward in earnest, driven by war with Spain and fears of Spanish naval attack against a relatively unprotected coastline, and Baltimore ranked high among the cities needing new defenses. Fort Howard and three other forts on the Patapsco—Fort Smallwood, Fort Armistead, and Fort Carroll—were built or modified to house state-of-the-art breech-loading artillery and electrically controlled mines. Construction of Fort Howard’s batteries began in 1897, and by 1903 the entrance to Baltimore harbor held thirty-six artillery pieces and scores of mines ready for defense. In 1908 a local newspaper, reporting on the completion of the four forts, called them “The Bulldog at Baltimore’s Gate.” For two decades the four forts guarded the Patapsco, but by 1922 new 16-inch batteries at Fort Story near the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay made the Baltimore and Washington forts redundant, and the last gun battery defending Baltimore was deactivated in 1927. Five of the concrete gun batteries remain at the park.

Edgemere, Maryland · United States