Fort Hunt Park

Battery Mount Vernon at Fort Hunt was built as part of a nationwide effort to modernize coastal defenses after an 1885 commission chaired by Secretary of War William C. Endicott found the system dangerously outdated. Completed in early 1898 as the first of four gun batteries, it was intended to help protect Washington, D.C., from naval attack at the start of the Spanish-American War, though no shots were fired in anger from Fort Hunt during that war. The site also carries earlier and later histories: George Washington owned this land as part of his River Farm, where enslaved people worked the fields on ground long used by American Indians for hunting and fishing; the Civilian Conservation Corps later operated a camp here during the Great Depression; in 1933 the area became part of the George Washington Memorial Parkway; and during World War II the U.S. Army Military Intelligence Service ran two secret operations here.

Fort Hunt, Virginia · United States