Fighting the Sea - Saving the Fort

Seacoast erosion, intensified by hurricanes and other major storms, was a long-standing and controversial problem at Fort Fisher and along the North Carolina coast. Erosion at Fort Fisher worsened after the 1930s, and by 1968 more than 200 yards of the original fort were underwater. Various efforts to control the erosion, including attempts to place rubble along the shoreline, failed, and storm damage and erosion required some roads to be realigned. In the 1990s, the Citizens’ Committee to Save Fort Fisher worked with officials to secure funds for a 3,040-foot stone revetment designed by the Army Corps of Engineers to stop further erosion. Completed in 1996, the revetment, made largely of heavy concrete stay-pods and boulders, protected the remaining Civil War earthworks and U.S. 421. Although hurricanes in 1996 and 1999 damaged the revetment and historic site and temporarily closed parts of it, Fort Fisher was saved from the destructive waters.

North Carolina · United States