Fort Barrington, on the north side of Georgia’s Altamaha River near present-day Darien, was built in 1751 as a British frontier fort at a strategic river crossing where a Native American trail met the route between Savannah and St. Augustine. Constructed under Lieutenant Robert Baillie, it helped defend against Spanish Florida and Native American raids. The fort remained important through multiple wars, serving during the American Revolution as the American southern theater headquarters under the name Fort Howe until Loyalist forces captured and burned it on March 13, 1778, taking 23 Patriots prisoner. Confederate forces later occupied the site, and the crossing it guarded remained vital well into the 20th century.