Fort Edgecomb's octagonal blockhouse, with wall openings for guns and small cannons and a shingled exterior seen in early photographs, is the best preserved of the nation's smaller fortifications built during the early 1800s. After 1816, except for a brief period during the Civil War, the site was quiet and the blockhouse and other fort buildings deteriorated badly. In 1869, a local citizen informed the Secretary of War that the blockhouse was in poor condition and that a contractor had removed more than 40,000 bricks from the fort's parapet and brick kitchen to build Wiscasset's new customs house. The Secretary of War then appointed local citizens as keepers of the fort to oversee restoration, focusing on the blockhouse as the fort's main attraction while other buildings in worse condition were removed. Beginning in 1875, local people organized fundraising events to save the blockhouse, and a nearby summer resident continued the effort in 1908 by raising money through fortune telling and lace-making. In 1923, urged by Maine Governor Percival Baxter, the state bought Fort Edgecomb for $501 after the Secretary of War sought to dispose of military posts, and the fort then came under the care of the Maine State Park Commission; today it is managed by the Maine Department of Conservation's Bureau of Parks and Lands. In 1808, Wiscasset resident Moses Carlton praised the nearly finished blockhouse and Major Porter's work to Secretary of War Henry Dearborn. Porter, born in 1756 in Danvers, Massachusetts, had served under Generals Washington and Knox in the Revolutionary War, specialized in artillery, supervised construction at Fort Edgecomb for six months while staying at the home of Moses Davis, and also oversaw other forts or batteries in Boothbay, Georgetown, Thomaston, and Castine.