Strategic Post

Known as Lookout Hill, this high ground served as an observation post, military camp, and gun battery. Although unfinished when the British arrived, the battery helped fend off a naval flanking attack on September 14, 1814. Had the maneuver succeeded, the enemy could have penetrated the city’s western defenses. The circular battery was later named Fort Wood for an officer killed on the Niagara River. Alfred Jacob Miller, best known for paintings of the American West, left an important record of the Battle of Baltimore by painting this scene from the viewpoint of Fort Wood in 1828-1829 as his father, who was in the battle, described it. An eyewitness account in the Salem Gazette of September 27, 1814, said that the well-directed fire of the little fort checked the enemy on his approach and probably saved the town from destruction in the dark hours of the night.

Baltimore, Maryland · United States