Fort Foote stood on Rozier's Bluff with Washington, DC on the horizon and the Potomac River below, where an armed sentry watched the heavy traffic of passing ships and crews loaded supplies onto the wharf. The river was the Union Army's main route to reach the fort. Together, Fort Foote and Battery Rodgers defended the southern approach to the Union capital from enemy ships. More than a thousand acres had been cleared of timber to give the fort a clear sweep, though more still had to be cut, leaving Alfred Seelye Roe to remark that it seemed strange for the capital of the United States to have been located in such a wilderness.