General Oglethorpe chose this site for Frederica's fort on high ground at a river bend where cannon could hold off Spanish ships upstream or downstream, while flanking marshes protected against land attack and abundant timber supplied building materials for fortifications. In 1736, Francis Moore wrote that in the morning Mr. Oglethorpe began to mark out a fort with four bastions and taught the men how to dig the ditch and raise and turf the rampart. The fort at Frederica became the center of military operations along the Southern frontier of the British colonies, and from here Oglethorpe launched offensives against the Spanish at St. Augustine. When the Spanish invaded Georgia in 1742, they were turned back before reaching Frederica. The fort was eventually leveled not by the Spanish but by time and the elements, and archeological excavations in the 1950s confirmed the locations of palisades, walls, and buildings, with earthworks partially reconstructed.
