In 1811, the Mount Vernon Cantonment, located on a hill about three miles west of the Mobile River, was laid out by Col. Thomas H. Cushing on the site of a spring called Mount Vernon Springs. In 1814, the garrison at Mt. Vernon was visited by Andrew Jackson. Construction of the Old Federal Road from Milledgeville, Georgia to Fort Stoddert, Alabama began in 1818. In 1828, President Andrew Jackson authorized Mt. Vernon to become a military arsenal, and by 1830 construction began on a wall ten feet high and two feet thick to encompass it. In 1861, Captain Jesse Reno surrendered the Mt. Vernon arsenal to four Confederate companies from Mobile. In 1866, the arsenal was returned to the Federal Government, and in 1870 the post ceased to be an arsenal. In 1873, Secretary of War William Belknap recommended that the arsenal property become Mt. Vernon Barracks. In 1887, 450 Apaches came to Mt. Vernon from Fort Pickens, Florida, among them the Indian Chiefs Geronimo, Chihuahua, and Natchez, son of Cochise. In 1895, Mt. Vernon Barracks was given to the State of Alabama.