Fort Point National Historic Site
 At the outbreak of Civil War battles, newly constructed Fort Point stood as a prime example of the U.S. Army’s most sophisticated
fortifications. Military officials declared its position at the Golden Gate as the "key to the whole Pacific coast." Its massive brick walls
looked to be impenetrable. Even as its praises were being sung, new rifled artillery was in use that could bore through masonry walls – as
had happened at similar forts on the East Coast. Fort Point never saw action. It survives as a monument to a bygone era and a place where
you can explore life at a coastal defense garrison in the 1860s.
Sentinel at the Golden Gate
The entrance to San Francisco Bay has long been the site of human habitation. The earliest residents of the area, ancestors of the Ohlone and
Miwok peoples, depended on the bay’s waters for food and transportation. There is evidence from about 4,000 years ago of an Ohlone village
located about a mile from Fort Point along the bay shore.
The Castillo de San Joaquin
In 1769 Gaspar de Portola overland expedition reached San Francisco Bay. By 1776 Spain had established the area’s first European settlement,
with a mission and a presidio (military post). Fearful of encroachment by the British and Russians, Spain fortified the high white cliff at the
narrowest part of the bay’s entrance, where Fort Point now stands. The Castillo de San Joaquin, built in 1794, was an adobe structure housing 9
to 13 cannon. The little fortress guarded the Spanish colony until 1821, when Mexico won independence from Spain and gained control of the
region.
In 1835 the Mexican army moved to Sonoma and the castillo’s adobe walls were left to crumble in the wind and rain. War broke out between
Mexico and the United States in 1846. On July 1, U.S. Army officer John Charles Fremont, along with Kit Carson and a band of 10 followers,
stormed the castillo and spiked the cannons. They discovered that the fortress was empty.
After the United States prevailed in the war against Mexico in 1848, California was ceded to the U.S. The gold strike that year at Sutter’s
Mill on the American River lured tens of thousands of prospectors. Most of the Fortyniners arrived by sea, making San Francisco the major West
Coast harbor as of 1849. When California became the 31st state in 1850, the U.S. Army and Navy officials recommended a series of
fortifications to secure San Francisco Bay. Coastal defenses were built at Alcatraz, Fort Mason, and Fort Point.
 Fort Point and Civil War battles
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began work on Fort Point in 1853. Plans specified that the lowest tier of artillery be as close as possible
to water level so cannonballs could ricochet across the water’s surface to hit enemy ships at the waterline. Workers blasted the 90-foot cliff
down to 15 feet above sea level. The structure featured seven-foot-thick walls and multi-tiered casemated construction typical of Third System
forts. It was sited to defend the maximum amount of harbor area. While there were more than 30 such forts on the East Coast, Fort Point was the
only one on the West Coast. In 1854 Inspector Gen. Joseph F.K. Mansfield declared "this point as the key to the whole Pacific Coast…and it should
receive untiring exertions."
A crew of 200, many employed miners, labored for eight years on the fort. In 1861, with war looming, the Army mounted the fort’s first cannon.
Col. Albert Sidney Johnston, commander of the Department of the Pacific, prepared Bay Area defenses and ordered in the first troops to the fort.
Kentucky-born Johnston then resigned his commission to join the Confederate Army; he was killed at the Battle of Shiloh in 1862.
With Civil War battles raging throughout the nation, artillerymen at Fort Point stood guard for an enemy that never came. The Confederate
raider CSS Shenandoah planned to attack San Francisco, but on the way to the harbor the captain learned that the war was over; it was
August 1865.
Severe damage to similar forts on the Atlantic Coast during the war – Fort Sumter in South Carolina and Fort Pulaski in Georgia – challenged
the effectiveness of masonry walls against rifled artillery. Troops soon moved out of Fort Point, and it was never again continuously occupied by
the Army. The fort was nonetheless important enough to receive protection from the elements. In 1869 a granite seawall was completed. The
following year, some of the fort’s cannon were moved to Battery East on the bluffs nearby, where they were more protected. In 1882 Fort Point was
officially name Fort Winfield Scott after the famous hero from the war against Mexico. The name never caught on and was later applied to an
artillery post at the Presidio.
 Into a New Century
In 1892 the Army began constructing the new Endicott System concrete fortifications armed with steel, breech-loading rifled guns. Within eight
years, all 102 of the smooth-bore cannons at Fort Point had been dismounted and sold for scrap. The fort, moderately damaged in 1906 earthquake,
was used over the next four decades for barracks, training, and storage. Soldiers from the 6th U.S. Coast Artillery were stationed
here during World War II to guard minefields and the anti-submarine net that spanned the Golden Gate.
Preserving Fort Point
In 1926 the American Institute of Architects proposed preserving the fort for its outstanding military architecture. Funds were unavailable,
and the idea languished. Plans for the Golden Gate Bridge in the 1930s called for the forts’ removal, but Chief Engineer Joseph Strauss
redesigned the bridge to save the fort. "While the old fort has no military value now," Strauss said, "it remains nevertheless a fine example of
the mason’s art….It should be preserved and restored as a national monument."
Preservation efforts were revived after World War II. On October 16, 1970, President Richard Nixon signed the bill creating Fort Point
National Historic Site. The fort tells the story of its years spent guarding the Golden Gate.
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