Fort Frederick State Park preserves Maryland’s restored Fort Frederick on the Potomac River, where a major eighteenth-century frontier stronghold anchors a broader landscape that also includes the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. Built in 1756 and 1757 during the French and Indian War, the fort was designed as a stone refuge for settlers rather than a conventional artillery fortress. It sheltered residents during raids, housed British regulars and militia, and served again during Pontiac’s Rebellion. During the American Revolutionary War, it became a prisoner-of-war camp for captured British and German soldiers. After brief Civil War use, Maryland acquired the property in 1922, and reconstruction in the 1930s helped restore it.