Fort Brady

After Lewis Cass accomplished a treaty in 1820, the way was cleared for the U.S. Army to establish a post at the Sault. Secretary of War John C. Calhoun then ordered a battalion of the 2nd U.S. Infantry, consisting of 250 men and 17 officers under Colonel Hugh Brady, to build a fort at the Sault rapids. In the summer of 1822, the troops left Sacketts Harbor with their families aboard the steamer Superior, but when the vessel could not pass beyond the Neebish Rapids, they continued up the St. Marys in large canoes and reached the Sault on July 6. John Johnston welcomed them, and after pitching tents in a nearby open field, Colonel Brady chose a site on land once owned by the Northwest Company and then by Charles Oakes Ermatinger of the Sault, Canada. The soldiers quickly began construction, cutting a road to a hill a mile south for timber, and by the summer of 1823 Fort Brady was finished. Its rectangular stockade of twelve-foot cedar posts measured about 200 feet east to west and 300 feet north to south to the river's edge, enclosing log buildings and corner blockhouses with stone foundations; the west one-third of de Repentigny Fort lay inside the stockade. U.S. troops occupied Fort Brady until they were withdrawn for field service during the Mexican War, after which a company of the 1st Michigan Infantry remained until April 1848. The fort stood vacant until U.S. troops returned in June 1849, and it was evacuated again in 1857 when the troops were sent to Fort Snelling. An Ordnance Sergeant kept charge of it until May 1866, when Company D, 4th U.S. Infantry reoccupied the post, removed the stockade because of its dilapidated condition, rebuilt most of the buildings, and enlarged the grounds. In 1886, with the surrounding village growing, the Secretary of War received authority to sell the old reservation and establish a new site. According to legend, Philip Sheridan, then General-in-Chief of the Army, chose the new location, and in 1893 the garrison moved into New Fort Brady on the same hill where troops had cut timber in 1822 for the original fort. Most of the old reservation was sold in 1894 except for the land now comprising Brady Park and the block to the south. In 1908, Congress appropriated $15,000 for a Federal Building on the site, and two years later a classical structure of Vermont granite and Bedford limestone, designed by Architect John Taylor Knox, stood there amid extensive formal landscaping.

Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan · United States