Fort Alice

On April 26, 1863, during the Confederate occupation of Oakland, a detachment of Confederate Capt. John H. McNeill's partisan rangers attacked the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad bridge here over the Youghiogheny River. They were part of a larger group that entered Oakland that Sunday as Confederate Gen. William E. “Grumble” Jones led an incursion into West Virginia and Maryland to hamper rail movements of Federal troops and supplies. The Confederates disarmed the small garrison at Fort Alice, destroyed the fort, and burned the bridge. Fort Alice was one of many fortifications that the U.S. Army erected in Maryland and present-day West Virginia to guard the strategically vital railroad from Baltimore to the Ohio River. In 1861, the Federals constructed an earth and stone fortification fifteen feet high near the tracks to protect the railroad bridge here. Local troops garrisoned the fort periodically. Discipline was somewhat lax, however, and on the morning of the raid, most of the soldiers were away hunting.

Oakland, Maryland · United States