> **Fort Point: Sentry at Golden Gate**
>
> By John Martini, Historian
>
> *Fort Point has been called "the pride of the Pacific," "the Gibraltar
> of the West Coast," and "one of the most perfect models of masonry in
> America." When construction began during the height of the California
> gold rush, Fort Point was planned as the most formidable deterrence
> America could offer to a naval attack on California. Although its guns
> never fired a shot in anger, Fort Point has witnessed Civil War,
> obsolescence, earthquake, bridge construction, remodeling for later
> wars, and restoration as a National Historic Site. It stands today
> beneath the soaring Golden Gate Bridge as a monument to more than two
> centuries of military presence on San Francisco Bay. The fort also
> bears silent and eloquent testimony to the craftsmanship of the Army
> engineers who designed it and the workers who erected it.*
>
> **Early History: 1776 -- 1846**
>
> The site of Fort Point was originally a high promontory known to
> 18th-century Spanish colonizers as "Punta del Cantil Blanco"- White
> Cliff Point. Located at the narrowest part of the only entrance to San
> Francisco Bay, the point was an obvious location for a fort to keep
> out enemy ships. In 1794 the Spanish erected a tiny adobe gun battery
> atop Cantil Blanco as defense against possible British and Russian
> aggression. Christened "Castillo de San Joaquin," the little fort and
> its handful of century-old bronze and iron guns soon fell victim to
> the harsh San Francisco climate. Adobe walls melted in the rain, and
> lack of repair funds from far-off Madrid led to eventual ruin of the
> Castillo. Shortly after Mexico gained its independence from Spain in
> 1821, the fort was abandoned to the elements.
>
> The only invasion in San Francisco's history occurred at the Castillo
> in 1846 during the short-lived "Bear Flag Revolt." Early in the
> morning of July 1, a rough-hewn group of Yankees, led by John Charles
> Fremont and Kit Carson began the long pull across the Bay from
> Sausalito to the ancient Spanish fort "Castillo de San Joaquin" on the
> San Francisco shore. They called themselves "Bear Flaggers" after
> their flag of revolution, and their goal was the liberation of
> California from Mexican control.
>
> Nosing their launch into a sheltered cove below the fort, the raiders
> scrambled up the hundred-foot hillside, swarmed into the crumbling
> Castillo and spiked the cannon mounted within its walls. The only
> tarnish on the victory was that the Castillo had not been garrisoned
> for a dozen years. "In the absence of a garrison with no powder,"
> wrote one caustic historian, "it is not surprising that not one of the
> ten cannon offered the slightest resistance."
>
> United States military forces were shortly in control of California.
> The growing American population gave local landmarks new names, and
> the old Castillo soon became known as "Fort Blanco." The point upon
> which it sat was simply nicknamed "Fort Point." It was a name that
> would stick.
>
> **A Fort to Guard the Golden Gate: 1848 - 1868**
>
> The California Gold Rush of 1848 took the United States by surprise.
> Not only was the wealth of the gold fields nearly incalculable, but
> ship traffic into San Francisco increased dramatically. Only a few
> ships a year had previously visited the port, but during 1849 alone,
> 770 vessels entered the Golden Gate. Commerce was booming, and docks,
> a Navy yard and other strategic harbor installations were under
> construction. The military suddenly found itself responsible for
> protecting the most valuable prize in North America: San Francisco
> Bay.
>
> While the U.S. Army quickly realized that permanent defenses were
> needed, it would take time to plan and build major fortifications, or
> "works;' to protect the Bay. The harbor needed immediate security, so
> in March 1849, six modern artillery pieces were temporarily mounted
> inside the remains of the old Castillo de San Joaquin. The following
> year, a joint Army-Navy board convened to make recommendations for
> defending the entire Pacific coast. Their report, released on November
> 1, 1850, focused on San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate channels as
> the keys to defense of the new state. The board recommended the
> construction of two major forts, one on either shore of the Golden
> Gate's straits formed by Fort Point and Lime Point. The proposed forts
> would provide a devastating crossfire where the channel measured
> little more than a mile wide, focusing the effect of several hundred
> cannon upon any enemy ship entering the Bay.
>
> Backing up this outer line of defense would be an inner line centered
> around a third major fort on Alcatraz Island. This fort, in turn,
> would be backed up by smaller batteries on Angel Island, Yerba Buena
> Island, and Point San Jose on the northern San Francisco waterfront.
> Any ship making it through the crossfire at the Golden Gate would thus
> have to run a gauntlet of additional gun batteries no matter which
> course it chose through the Bay.
>
> Board members were very insistent that work begin immediately at Fort
> Point, where "the first work for the defense of the passage should be
> placed, and nothing should be allowed to interfere with bringing this
> battery as rapidly as possible to a state of efficiency." They
> specified the fort should be "as powerful in its fire on the water
>
> as . . . the largest of our fortifications on the Atlantic," and
> recommended mounting over 100 cannon of the largest caliber available.
>
> The style of fort proposed by the engineers was a massive,
> multi-storied masonry structure containing scores of smoothbore
> cannon. The guns would be mounted both in enclosed "casemates" and in
> open "barbette" batteries atop the fort's roof. Within its five to
> seven foot thick walls would also be quarters for the officers and
> soldiers, store rooms, powder magazines, and enough water and
> provisions to withstand a six-month siege.
>
> Before work could begin on construction of the fort, the remains of
> the old Castillo and the heights of Cantil Blanco had to be leveled.
> Military technology of the day dictated that the lowest level of guns
> in the fort should be as close to the water as possible. The new work
> would be built at an elevation only fifteen feet above the Bay. The
> entire tip of the hundred-foot-high peninsula would have to be cut
> down nearly to sea level to provide a platform for the huge casemated
> fort.
>
> By mid-September of 1853, a construction gang had demolished the old
> Castillo and begun leveling the promontory, spreading its rocky spoil
> along the base of the cliffs east and west of the point. It took a
> year of chipping and blasting at the serpentine rock to complete a
> platform measuring 150 yards by 100 yards. Once the site was cleared,
> work began on the massive foundations for the fort itself.
>
> Finding the necessary building materials at reasonable prices became a
> never-ending problem for the engineers overseeing the project. Very
> few of the sources of brick and stone in California met the Army's
> high standards for use in fortifications. Adding to the engineers'
> problems was the remoteness of California; every construction bid and
> material sample examined by the local Army engineers had to be
> reviewed by Chief of Engineers General Joseph Totten in Washington,
> D.C. During the Gold Rush, the simple act of sending a memo and
> receiving a reply took as long as three months.
>
> In late 1854, the supervising engineer at Fort Point finally secured
> permission to use granite imported from China in the work's
> foundations; it was of better quality than anything he had been able
> to find in California, and it cost less than local stone despite being
> shipped over 5,000 miles. As soon as the foundation trenches were dug,
> workers laid the slabs of granite atop concrete footings secured to
> bedrock. Inside the perimeter of the foundations, additional
> excavations were made for five deep cisterns that would hold 200,000
> gallons of water for use during time of siege.
>
> Once the foundations were complete, construction began on the arched
> casemates that would provide rooms for the garrison and guns. The
> fort's floor plan was basically an irregularly shaped rectangle with
> four principal sides, or faces. The west, north, and east faces looked
> out on the straits of the Golden Gate and into the harbor, and it was
> on these sides that the fort mounted three tiers of guns. The south
> side of the fort, officially known as the "gorge," would contain the
> powder magazines, storerooms, tiny jail, kitchens and barracks for the
> garrison. In the center of this land face stood the only entrance to
> the fort -- a heavily guarded "sallyport," or protected passageway,
> sealed at both ends by heavy oak doors. Atop the fort was the barbette
> tier which mounted guns on all four sides. On the hill behind the
> fort, an additional ten-gun battery known as an "outwork" was planned,
> providing still more protection.
>
> Three years into the project, changes were made to the original
> semi-rectangular outline of the fort. The engineers added two flanking
> towers, or "bastions," jutting out from the east and west faces of the
> main work, and they discarded their plan to build a moat separating
> the fort from the land. They also decided not to build the fort
> entirely of granite, even though the first tier had been partially
> completed. Instead, most of the fort would be constructed of brick
> made to the engineers' specifications in their own brickyard on the
> hill south of the fort.
>
> Work progressed at a steady pace on construction of the tiers of
> casemates on the waterfronts and gorge face. Master masons were
> recruited for dressing and setting the granite blocks and laying the
> millions of brick required in the work. To assist them, the engineers
> recruited a small army of journeymen masons, carpenters, blacksmiths,
> teamsters, and common laborers from the swollen ranks of unemployed
> miners who had gone "bust" in the gold fields.
>
> By late 1859, the fort's walls had nearly reached their full height
> and the work was almost ready to receive its armament. The two
> additional bastions brought the total number of gun positions inside
> the fort's walls to 126, while the outwork battery above the fort
> could mount ten more guns. A detached "counterscarp gallery" capable
> of handling an additional five guns had also been built facing the
> sallyport, bringing the grand total to 141 cannon positions at "the
> fort at Fort Point."
>
> [The Civil War Years: Occupying the Fort]{.underline}
>
> Ironically, as the fort neared completion, funds grew scarce. By late
> 1860, the labor force had been reduced to just a few men engaged in
> setting flagstones and hanging doors. All that changed in early 1861,
> however, when South Carolina led the other southern states in seceding
> from the Union. Nervous Unionists in San Francisco feared that
> "pro-Secessionist" forces might try to arrack and seize the forts on
> the Bay.
>
> Kentucky-born Colonel Albert Sydney Johnston was the Army's Commander
> of the Department of the Pacific. To head off any attempts by local
> Southern sympathizers to capture the Bay, Johnston ordered the
> garrison on newly finished Alcatraz Island to go on full alert, and
> directed that troops immediately occupy the nearly complete fort at
> Fort Point. On February 15, 1861, Company I of the Third U.S.
> Artillery U.S. Regiment, Captain John Lendrum commanding, moved into
> the unfinished quarters and empty gun casemates of the fort.
>
> The soldiers' first orders reflected Johnston's overriding concern
> that the fort might be attacked momentarily by Southern
> sympathizers-the greatest perceived threat was from land, not sea.
> Captain Lendrum was directed to keep two guards on duty at all times;
> none of the magazines or outer doors were to be opened without an
> officer present; a patrol was to search the perimeter of the fort
> within distance of rifle shot before the sallyport was opened; and the
> entire garrison was to be kept under arms while the patrol was outside
> the fort.
>
> The artillerymen of Company I, however, were the keepers of a fort
> without cannon - a "toothless tiger." The fort would not receive its
> guns for the casemates or barbettes for nearly three months.
> Pro-secessionists boasted that they could easily capture the fort, so
> when the first guns arrived the artillerymen mounted them on the
> barbette tier of the gorge, facing south to repel a land attack rather
> than seaward to fend off an enemy fleet. By October, additional guns
> had arrived and the annual ordnance report showed 55 guns mounted
> inside the fort, mostly on the first tier and atop the barbette.
>
> Colonel Johnston resigned his command on April 13, 1861, the day
> following the attack on Fort Sumter. His replacement, General Edwin
> Sumner, posted new orders upon receiving word of the outbreak of war.
> The Bay's two forts were to be ready for instant action, and all ships
> entering the harbor were to be inspected by a revenue cutter and their
> intentions verified before being allowed to moor along the waterfront.
> If any vessels were spotted flying the rebel flag, they were to be
> immediately stopped or "fired into and sunk."
>
> No Confederate ships ever tried to run the gauntlet of defenses that
> sprang up around San Francisco Bay during the Civil War. The
> artillerymen-over 500 in June 1865-occupied the fort mainly as an
> armed deterrent at the Golden Gate. Soldiers were frequently moved in
> and out of the fort, and during the presidential election of 1864 the
> troops were sent into San Francisco to provide additional security
> against possible rioting.
>
> The closest the fort ever came to seeing combat actually occurred
> after the end of the Civil War. In the summer of 1865, news reached
> San Francisco that the Confederate raider *Shenandoah* was off the
> California coast. The ship's commander, Captain James Waddell, had
> been at sea for over a year and was unaware that the Confederacy had
> fallen. Waddell's plan was to run past Fort Point at night, ram and
> disable the Navy's picket ship, and turn his guns on San Francisco.
> Artillerymen at Fort Point and Alcatraz were ready, but they waited in
> vain for the *Shenandoah*. Only a few days away from the Golden Gate,
> Waddell learned from a friendly British ship of the peace at
> Appomattox Court House and dropped his plan to capture San Francisco.
>
> [Life at Fort Point]{.underline}
>
> Throughout the Civil War, the soldiers at Fort Point waited for an
> enemy that never came. For most of the war, life at the fort was a
> never-ending series of drills, parades, gun practice and maintenance
> work. Every day, soldiers responded to a seemingly endless succession
> of bugle calls and drum rolls interrupted by periodic inspections by
> visiting dignitaries and weekly artillery exercises.
>
> The population of the fort fluctuated throughout the 1860s, with some
> companies spending only a few weeks at the post. The longest stay at
> the fort is credited to Company B of the Third Artillery, which
> arrived in March 1861 and stayed for the next two and half years.
>
> As a post, Fort Point was damp, cold, and isolated. The fort was on a
> tip of land of great strategic value but it was frequently enveloped
> in fog and swept by strong winds. Spray from crashing Pacific waves
> often blew over the parapet walls of the barbette tier, making life
> miserable for the sentries on duty. The interior courtyard of the fort
> was arranged like a well, and for much of the day the parade ground
> and living quarters were cloaked in deep shadows. The thick walls of
> the fort, designed to keep out enemy artillery fire, created dank
> living quarters. The only heat came from tiny fireplaces in each of
> the gorge rooms, and it took hours for a smoky coal fire to heat up
> the interior of a gloomy casemate.
>
> Garrison life was considerably better for the officers assigned to the
> fort than for the enlisted soldiers. The second tier of the gorge was
> "officers' country," where unmarried officers were assigned individual
> bedrooms. Each pair of bedrooms shared a common parlor, and personal
> furnishings for these rooms were popular; a well-turned-out parlor
> might feature curtains, carpets, a hooked rug, paintings on the walls
> and damask-covered chairs. A few lucky officers were allowed to bring
> their wives to the post, and before the end of the Civil War a handful
> of wood frame residences were built south of the fort for these
> married officers. Officers were also part of San Francisco's
> privileged class of society, and invitations to dress balls, parties
> and other events offered pleasant breaks from the monotony of duty in
> a seacoast fortress.
>
> Enlisted men enjoyed few luxuries at Fort Point. Living in the
> third-tier gorge casemates, the privates and non-commissioned soldiers
> lacked almost all of the comforts enjoyed by the officers downstairs.
> The enlisted men slept in two-man bunks, twelve bunks to a casemate,
> twenty-four men to a room filled with the mingled aromas of sour
> straw, stale tobacco and unwashed, wet woolen uniforms. A soldier had
> few possessions, restricted to what could be stuffed in a pack stowed
> at the foot of the bunk or hung on a wooden wall peg. Mattresses were
> sacks filled with straw ticking, the latrine was at the end of the
> tier and personal hygiene was basic. (Army regulations stipulated
> mandatory bathing once a week and washing of the feet twice a week.)
>
> Part of life at Fort Point was visiting the sutler's store. The
> sutler, a fixture at nearly every 19th-century Army post in the United
> States, was a civilian merchant who was licensed by the Secretary of
> War to sell 'luxury items' that were otherwise unavailable from the
> fort's quartermaster. Fort Point's original sutler was E. B.
> Willitson, who established his store in a wood frame building outside
> the fort's walls. Inside his small structure, lit with oil-burning
> lanterns, were aisles lined with barrels and crates of goods. Tobacco,
> candy, sewing kits, civilian-manufactured clothing, canned foods,
> decks of cards, "penny dreadful" novels, and on occasion, alcoholic
> beverages, could be found on his well-stocked shelves.
>
> Willitson was authorized to extend credit to up to one-third of a
> soldier's monthly pay to anyone whose cravings exceeded his wallet's
> contents. However, Willitson also appeared with the paymaster on
> payday to settle any outstanding accounts before the soldiers were
> issued their \$13 salaries. Although soldiers grumbled about the high
> prices and occasionally shoddy merchandise, the sutler's store still
> served as an oasis from the regimented routine of military life. The
> sutler's became an off-duty gathering spot where the troops could pass
> a private hour around a coal-burning stove or linger over a game of
> checkers.
>
> [Defense Against the Sea: The Seawall]{.underline}
>
> Almost as soon as the soldiers moved into the new fort they found it
> was literally being eaten away by natural forces. When the bluff of
> Cantil Blanco was demolished to make way for the new fort, its rocky
> remains were spread along the shore to protect the new fortification's
> foundations. By early 1862, though, much of this rubble had eroded and
> waves were threatening to undermine the concrete and granite footings.
> Engineers began to focus their attentions on construction of a seawall
> to protect the fort.
>
> Over the next eight years, work progressed on a 1,500-foot granite
> seawall enclosing the tip of Fort Point that would have to withstand
> the full force of the Pacific Ocean. Thousands of tons of granite
> blocks were imported from Folsom, California, and laid together in
> interlocking keyed courses backed with concrete and packed rubble. The
> spaces between the stones were filled with cement, and then covered
> with tar-impregnated cloth and molten lead to keep out the salt water.
> The seawall was finally completed in 1869, just as soldiers began
> vacating the fort.
>
> The new seawall, a masterpiece of engineering, protected a fortress
> whose day was rapidly passing. Military engineers had studied the
> performance of forts similar to Fort Point during the Civil War and
> came up with a dismal forecast: advances in modern long-range rifled
> artillery made these masonry forts obsolete. The most notable example
> of a failed casemated work occurred at Fort Pulaski near Savannah,
> Georgia, where Union guns demolished the fort's seven-foot thick walls
> in just under 48 hours. Now that the war was over, the U.S. Army was
> having serious doubts about the wisdom of protecting the country's
> crucial harbors with such vulnerable targets.
>
> The artillerymen at Fort Point left in March 1868. Where only four
> years before the fort had been reported "in perfect order and
> cleanliness," an inspection of the post a few months after closing
> revealed a dismal picture. The guns were badly cared for, their wooden
> carriages were in disrepair, ironwork around the gun embrasures was
> rusting, the interiors of the barracks rooms were falling apart, and
> several unmounted guns were found lying in the surf near the fort's
> wharf. The reporting officer was furious: "There must be something
> wrong in a military organization which can present such carelessness."
> The fort at Fort Point, he concluded, "was sadly in want of a
> commanding officer." As it turned out, the fort would be in want of a
> good commanding officer - and a garrison-for another ten years.
>
> **The Fort Becomes a Barracks: 1868 - 1914**
>
> The years following 1868 were lonely ones at Fort Point. No soldiers
> were posted there for nearly ten years, and the fort was relegated to
> caretaker status. The little work that did take place focused on
> completing the seawall and fighting the on-going battle against rust.
> While the war had shown how vulnerable casemated forts could be,
> engineers weren't ready to give up on what had become known to locals
> as "old Fort Point." Instead, they looked for ways to adapt the work
> to meet the challenge of rifled artillery.
>
> Beginning in 1870, workers began erecting batteries of a radically
> different style along the slopes above the old fort. Constructed of
> masses of dirt and masonry, the new "earthwork" gun emplacements of
> Batteries East and West (so-named because of their locations to the
> east and west of the old fort) soon began stretching along the heights
> of the Presidio. Designed to mount 15-inch caliber Rodman guns, the
> earthworks would serve as a simple, inexpensive defense that could
> easily be adapted to more modern gun designs.
>
> In 1876, however, all worked ceased at Fort Point when Congress
> refused to allocate money for construction of America's coastal
> defenses. Even the earthwork Batteries East and West stood incomplete,
> with only a handful of their 15-inch guns in place.
>
> The fort's caretaker, officially titled the Fort Keeper, now found
> himself not only combating rusty iron in the old fort but fighting off
> the advancing hordes of gophers which multiplied in the slopes of the
> earthwork batteries.
>
> Fort Point received a garrison again in 1878 when two companies of the
> 4th Artillery moved into the casemates. Over the next eight years,
> artillery and infantry soldiers would inhabit the old fort for short
> periods, using it primarily as a barracks rather than as a functioning
> defensive work. The soldiers periodically practiced with the rifled
> guns mounted in the casemates of the fort and with the 15-inch
> smoothbores in Battery West, but contemporary accounts reveal that
> accuracy was very poor. The problem apparently was with the training
> of the soldiers; the post-war budget for artillery practice was so
> small that the guns were only allotted an average of one shot per
> month. Besides, necessary maintenance had been deferred and the guns
> had an alarming habit of dismounting themselves during target
> practice. On one occasion, a 15-inch Rodman weighing 50,000 pounds
> jumped off its carriage in Battery West, in front of a horrified
> assemblage of military officers, invited dignitaries and newspaper
> reporters.
>
> After only eight years the soldiers were again withdrawn, and in 1886
> the fort was once more left to the care of a Fort Keeper. Thanks to
> its scenic location, though, the now-vacant fortress became something
> of a tourist attraction. A constant stream of visitors found their way
> into the fort. The view from the barbette tier was spectacular, and
> the aging Columbiad guns sitting on their platforms made favorite
> backdrops for photographers.
>
> In the early 1890s, Congress made funds available for yet another
> generation of fortifications, and plans were drawn up for a network of
> modern gun batteries on both sides of the Golden Gate. Preliminary
> concepts called for partly demolishing the old brick fort and placing
> two huge 16-inch caliber rifles in its remains.
>
> On July 13, 1890, on the eve of constructing the new concrete
> batteries at Fort Point, the San Francisco Examiner sent a reporter
> out to take what might have been a last look at the fort which "for
> many years has stood guard at the entrance to the Golden Gate." The
> picture he painted was evocative of an age long gone, even though the
> fort was less than thirty years old: "The ponderous smoothbores, once
> the pride of the military, are becoming rusted from want of use and
> the portholes are covered with cobwebs, and the grim-looking corridors
> which once knew the martial tread are now silent and deserted save for
> the merry prattle of children's voices or the presence of curious
> sightseers."
>
> The fort had begun to lose its "teeth" by this time. The oldest
> cannons still in place - the pre-Civil War 42-pounder guns now mounted
> in the third-tier casemates-were the first ones removed in 1885. The
> following year the barbette was disarmed, and throughout the 1890s,
> the removal of obsolete ordnance continued with the scrapping of the
> slightly more modern 10-inch smoothbore and 8-inch rifled Rodman guns.
> Shortly after the turn of the century, the remaining guns were dragged
> out the sallyport and turned over to a scrap dealer.
>
> Despite being disarmed, Fort Point was spared the fate of being
> demolished for another gun battery. By the time construction of the
> new fortifications began in 1892, plans for the two 16-inch guns atop
> the fort had been dropped. The engineers decided to leave the fort
> intact for the time being. It would serve well as barracks for
> soldiers manning the new gun batteries being erected on the site of
> Battery West. Shortly after the turn of the century, soldiers from the
> 66th Company of the newly named Coast Artillery Corps took up
> residence in the fort.
>
> [The Great Quake of 1906]{.underline}
>
> The Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 found several dozen men of
> the 66th Company asleep in their quarters in the gorge barracks.
> Jolted awake by the shock of the quake, the artillerymen quickly
> evacuated the fort but noticed one soldier was missing. Returning to
> their quarters, they heard a noise coming from outside the windows
> where one of their men was trapped. The half-awake soldier had
> attempted to climb out the window, found it barred on the outside,
> then turned to find the window had slammed shut behind him.
>
> The stranded artilleryman turned out to be only slightly shaken and
> dirty. The fort had fared much worse. A rock slide had closed the road
> leading to the city, the footbridge from the lighthouse keepers'
> residences to the top of the fort had collapsed, and perhaps most
> alarming, the entire gorge face had pulled away from the rest of the
> fort, leaving an eight-inch gap between the interior and exterior
> walls.
>
> The soldiers, fearing another quake might hit at any minute, formed a
> human chain into the fort and passed out their clothes and personal
> belongings. Making their way over the rock slide into the city, they
> spent the next several days fighting fires and helping with relief
> efforts.
>
> A formal inspection of the old fort eventually followed and the
> engineers decided that the cost of repairing the damaged south wall
> was simply too high. Fort Point was abandoned and its troops moved
> into new barracks south of the point. For the next several years, the
> fort slid deeper and deeper into disrepair, its interior slowly
> succumbing to the ravages of the elements and the vandalism of
> visitors. Despite periodic suggestions that the fort be rehabilitated
> for uses such as married enlisted men's quarters or as a military
> museum for the upcoming 1915 World's Fair, no preservation efforts
> took place other than an occasional sweeping out of accumulated
> debris.
>
> While the Army was concerning itself with how to deal with the flood
> of visitors the 1915 World's Fair would draw, another government
> agency was making plans on how to handle the huge numbers of new
> immigrants that would arrive in San Francisco once the new Panama
> Canal opened. The Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization eventually
> chose Alcatraz Island as the best possible location for a new
> immigration station.
>
> The fort on Alcatraz was also obsolete, and since 1907 the Army had
> transformed the island into a major military prison. In 1912 they had
> completed the world's largest concrete prison building atop the
> island, and it was this brand-new facility that attracted the Bureau
> of Immigration's attention. In 1914, two bills were introduced in
> Congress directing that the island be transferred to the Bureau of
> Immigration, and that the military prisoners be moved into old Fort
> Point.
>
> What followed was one of the most intriguing and depressing chapters
> in the history of the fort. Before either bill ever left committee,
> the Army undertook the complete remodeling of Fort Point for use as a
> "detention barracks," committing thousands of dollars to the
> conversion work without ever receiving direct orders or monetary
> authorization from the Congress.
>
> Throughout 1914, inmate crews from Alcatraz were ferried out to Fort
> Point to carry out the remodeling work. The convict workers tore up
> rusty gun rails, demolished the shot furnaces, paved the parade and
> barbette with concrete, installed toilets in the bastions, ripped out
> interior walls to make way for guards' barracks, cut oversized window
> openings into the gorge, and built wooden partitions in the casemates,
> dividing the gun rooms into oversized cells. The original wooden
> floors in the officers' and enlisted barracks were repaired,
> innumerable coal stoves were installed to provide heat, and the
> ornamental iron railings in the rear openings of the gun casemates
> were ripped out and replaced with wooden walls.
>
> Despite all the changes, Fort Point never became a detention barracks.
> Neither congressional bill authorizing the transfer of Alcatraz was
> ever enacted, and the entire matter died in committee before a single
> prisoner ever took up residence in the fort. Perhaps the only positive
> result of the conversion work was the repair of the south wall; the
> engineers installed steel tie-rods and turnbuckles to pull the
> earthquake-damaged gorge face back into an upright position. From the
> exterior, at least, the fort still looked much as it had in the 1860s.
>
> **The Golden Gate Bridge & World War II: 1915 - 1947**
>
> Although the fort never housed a detention barracks, the newly
> rehabilitated structure served a variety of other Presidio uses.
> Unmarried officers moved into the gorge during the World War I troop
> buildup, and in the early 1920s, trade schools at the Presidio used
> the casemates for classrooms and shop space. The Coast Artillery also
> found a new use for the fort by maintaining two "base end stations"
> atop the barbette as range-finding positions for the latest generation
> of Fort Scott gun batteries. The artillerymen also installed a 60-inch
> searchlight on the barbette and a generator plant in the first-floor
> casemates.
>
> By 1926 the fort was abandoned once again and vandals were finding
> their way into the structure. An inspection that year reported nearly
> all windows broken, ironwork badly rusting, one of the sallyport doors
> lying unhinged, filthy interior rooms covered with obscene graffiti,
> and lower-tier embrasures standing open, allowing unlimited access to
> tourists. The War Department, strapped for funds, spent a total of
> \$40.37 to board up doors and windows in an unsuccessful effort to
> keep out intruders.
>
> [The Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge]{.underline}
>
> At the same time the Army was spending tens of dollars on sealing the
> fort, the newly created Golden Gate Bridge District was raising tens
> of millions of dollars through bond sales for a bridge that would span
> the Golden Gate from Fort Point to Lime Point. Chief Engineer Joseph
> Strauss initially concluded that Fort Point sat on the optimal
> location for a huge concrete caisson anchoring the bridge's San
> Francisco end. After touring the empty fort, however, he changed his
> mind. In a 1937 memorandum to the bridge's Board of Directors, Strauss
> wrote: "While the old fort has no military value now, it remains
> nevertheless a fine example of the mason's art. Many urged the razing
> of this venerable structure to make way for modern progress. In the
> writer's view it should be preserved and restored as a national
> monument..."
>
> Strauss made some additional calculations and concluded that the fort
> could be spared by moving the southern anchorage several hundred feet
> south. However, in order to make up the difference in the total
> length, he would have to add a 'bridge within the bridge,' and
> consequently designed a steel arch in the southern anchorage to span
> the old fort. Fort Point would be overshadowed by the new bridge, but
> it would be preserved.
>
> Work on the Golden Gate Bridge began in 1933. Fort Point's casemates
> made convenient work space for the hundreds of workers and artisans
> who soon swarmed around the bridge's southern anchorage, and draftsmen
> set up shop in the old barracks. The second tier gun rooms served as a
> cafeteria for bridge workers, and atop the fort dozens of steel plates
> were painted with a variety of paint coatings and tints, then studied
> for resistance to salt corrosion. The fort was soon enveloped in a
> maze of wooden scaffolding as the huge steel arch was erected over the
> barbette tier.
>
> Although the main casemated portion of Fort Point was spared during
> construction, some of the outworks of the fort had to be demolished to
> make way for the southern bridge anchorage. Early in the excavation
> process, the bluff south of the fort was cut back several hundred
> feet, destroying the counterscarp gallery and ten-gun battery. Bridge
> excavators also uncovered a long-buried adobe shed believed to be a
> powder magazine from the Castillo de San Joaquin. After its location
> was noted and photographed, the hut was demolished; it stood in a
> location too critical for it to be preserved.
>
> But the bridge crews went to extraordinary lengths to preserve one of
> the fort' s most outstanding examples of military engineering, the
> granite seawall. A tall concrete bridge pylon was planned for the
> north side of the fort, directly atop the seawall. Instead of
> demolishing the wall or burying it with concrete, Strauss had it
> dismantled, stored, and re-erected once the pylon was finished.
>
> The Golden Gate Bridge's grand dedication took place in May of 1937.
> For the next few years the fort was nearly forgotten, overshadowed by
> the soaring new steel bridge overhead.
>
> [World War II]{.underline}
>
> The outbreak of World War II brought a massive increase in military
> activity around the Bay. In response to the fear that Japanese
> submarines might try to enter the harbor, a steel net was strung
> across the Golden Gate in early 1942. Stretching from Sausalito to the
> Marina Green, the submarine net was supported by dozens of buoys. A
> Navy tug boat was stationed midway along the net to pull it open for
> allied shipping, then close it once the vessels were safely through.
> The net was backed up by three mine fields in the approaches to the
> harbor, and the mine fields in turn were guarded by small, rapid-fire
> gun batteries on both sides of the Golden Gate.
>
> The Army needed a few more guns on the San Francisco side of the
> Golden Gate, so early in the war a pair of 3-inch caliber Anti-Motor
> Torpedo Boat (AMTB) guns from Marin County's forts were moved to the
> barbette tier of Fort Point. Named "Battery Point," the guns were
> positioned to protect the mine fields and submarine net from enemy
> ships. The AMTB guns were manned by soldiers from Battery N of the 6th
> U.S. Coast Artillery, who took up residence in the gorge barracks.
>
> The interior of the fort was refurbished one more time for living
> quarters and office space for a new garrison. The gun casemates were
> remodeled into a mess hall, recreation room, barber shop and post
> exchange, while the first-floor gorge rooms provided storage space for
> camouflage materials used in disguising nearby gun emplacements. By
> late 1944, however, the threat of Japanese attack had disappeared and
> the Fort Point troops were removed.
>
> The rapid demobilization following the end of the war left the Army
> with little time or money for preservation of the again-vacant fort.
> The few visitors who did find their way to the boarded-up structure
> found a desolate scene. The sallyport doors were kept locked, and only
> furtive glimpses of the interior were visible through chinks in
> concrete cinderblocks plugging the lowest tier of embrasures. The
> railings along the seawall had long-since rusted away, and generations
> of fishermen had dug most of the lead sheathing from between the
> granite blocks for use as sinkers. Even the three old lighthouse
> keepers' houses stood vacant, the Army unable to find anyone willing
> either to live beneath the incessant noise of the bridge or able to
> put up with the perils of debris dropped by pedestrians on its
> sidewalks.
>
> [Lighthouses at Fort Point]{.underline}
>
> Fort Point may have set a record for lighthouse construction; the site
> featured three different lighthouses within ten years, one of which
> gained notoriety for being razed before it ever showed a light.
>
> The U.S. Lighthouse Board decided to erect a light at the point in
> 1852 as an aid to ships entering the harbor during the Gold Rush. The
> Board ordered a combination keepers' residence and tower built at the
> tip of Punta Del Cantil Blanco, and before the end of 1852 a Cape Cod
> style lighthouse had been erected atop the point. The completed
> lighthouse awaited only the arrival of its brassbound crystal lens to
> go into service.
>
> Unknown to the Lighthouse Board, the Army Corps of Engineers also had
> plans for Cantil Blanco - they intended to cut it down to water level
> for their new casemated fort. In mid-1853 the old Spanish fort, the
> promontory on which it stood, and the brand new lighthouse were torn
> down. The engineers quickly worked out an arrangement with the
> Lighthouse Board to build another light tower just north of the fort
> at the Army's expense.
>
> The second light structure was completed in early 1855 and began
> operation March 21st. Its lantern was classified as a fifth-order
> Fresnel-pattern lens, producing a magnified beam of light visible
> twelve miles at sea.
>
> The two light keepers, or "wickies" as they were familiarly known,
> were responsible for both operating the light and for winding up the
> counterweights on an 1,100 pound fog bell mounted just outside the
> fort's walls. Local mariners, though, claimed the light was too dim
> for such an important location.
>
> The lighthouse soon had more severe problems than complaints from
> seafarers; the very land the tower sat on was being washed away by
> Pacific storms. In 1863, while the Army planned to build a granite
> seawall to protect the foundations of Fort Point, the Lighthouse Board
> secured permission to relocate the tower to the barbette tier of the
> fort itself.
>
> The third lighthouse, a nine-sided iron tower mounted atop one of the
> fort's spiral staircases, went into operation in January 1864. The
> Fort Point Light Station soon became known as one of the more
> desirable billets for West Coast wickies. The duties were relatively
> easy, the view inspiring, and the pleasures of San Francisco nearly
> unlimited. (This last benefit was greatly appreciated by men who had
> served at remote stations such as Pt. Reyes, where several
> 19th-century keepers were hauled away after going insane.)
>
> The Fort Point staff eventually increased to three keepers, and modern
> improvements such as electricity and a compressed-air foghorn made
> life easier for the crew. The wickies also found themselves carrying
> out duties more closely associated with tour guides and lifeguards
> than lighthouse keepers. The crowds that visited the point always
> seemed to find some new way to wriggle their way into the abandoned
> fortress, and tourists unfamiliar with the hazards of "sneaker" waves
> rolling in from the Pacific regularly ended up in the waters of the
> Gate. Keeper James Rankin set a record by rescuing eighteen people
> from the frigid waters of San Francisco Bay during his 41 years at
> Fort Point.
>
> The early 1930s brought the end of the Fort Point Station. The rising
> towers and anchorages of the Golden Gate Bridge that overshadowed old
> Fort Point also blotted out the light shining from its stubby
> lighthouse tower. In 1934 the station was shut down and its last
> keepers transferred to other lights, their duties assumed by an
> automatic lighthouse at the foot of the south bridge tower and
> remotely controlled fog signals along the span.
>
> **Restoring Fort Point: 1947 --Present**
>
> Public curiosity about Fort Point increased after World War II, and in
> 1947 a reporter doing a piece on the abandoned fort queried an Army
> public affairs officer on the military's neglect of the seldom-seen
> fortress. The officer responded that while the post-war Army did not
> have funds to rehabilitate the fort, the War Department "might be
> amenable to its conversion to a public monument."
>
> The idea of preserving Fort Point purely for its historic and
> architectural value had its origins in 1926. In that year, the
> prestigious American Institute of Architects (AIA) had written
> Secretary of War Dwight Davis about the deterioration of the fort. The
> AIA urged the Secretary to implement necessary repairs and begin
> routine maintenance of Fort Point, and to remove the "temporary
> partitions which alter the original historical purpose of the (fort's)
> plan."
>
> Following World War II, a movement took hold to protect and preserve
> Fort Point. In March 1947, the Army hosted an "open house" at the fort
> commemorating 100 years of U.S. military presence on the site. General
> Mark Clark, Commanding Officer of the Sixth Army, proposed to declare
> the fort surplus and turn it over to the War Assets Administration for
> disposal of an agency that might preserve it as a public attraction.
>
> Since the fort sat on federal land, the National Park Service (NPS)
> was the most likely candidate to receive the fort. If the NPS didn't
> have the funds, the State of California seemed the next most probably
> recipient. But that didn't stop other preservation-minded groups from
> making a bid for control of the fort. The hoped-for transfer never
> took place -- a War Department study determined, somewhat
> surprisingly, that it was still in the nation's interest to retain
> possession of the area.
>
> Preservation efforts languished for nearly ten years. The fort was
> opened for infrequent tours and to the general public for Armed Forces
> Day festivities. Despite several grassroots "Save-the-Fort" movements,
> the fort remained largely unprotected. Estimates for its restoration
> steadily grew higher.
>
> [Fort Point National Historic Site]{.underline}
>
> In 1959, a group of retired military officers and civilian engineers
> banded together to form the Fort Point Museum Association. Operating
> with the blessing of the U.S. Army, the Association spent the next
> eleven years raising funds for the preservation of the fort and
> lobbying for its creation as a National Historic Site. The Fort Point
> Museum Association realized that it must make the fort accessible to
> the public in order to build support for legislation of a new historic
> park. Working hand-in-hand with the 6th Army, the Association cleaned
> up the interior of the fort, erected safety barricades, sponsored
> special open house events, hosted school groups and civic agencies on
> tours of the fort, and opened the sallyport doors on weekends to
> ever-increasing numbers of visitors.
>
> These public activities and lobbying efforts did not go unnoticed. In
> 1968, local congressmen introduced bills calling for the creation of
> Fort Point National Historic Site. Both bills passed the House and
> Senate. On October 16, 1970, the bill in its final form was signed
> into law by President Richard Nixon. Today, Fort Point National
> Historic Site is open to the public and administered by Golden Gate
> National Recreation Area, National Park Service.
>
> Old Fort Point, "the fort that never fired a shot in anger," still
> stands beneath the Golden Gate Bridge as an impressive monument to the
> craftsmen who labored to create an impregnable fortress at the edge of
> America; a monument to the preservationists who fought to save the
> fort from decay and demolition; and most importantly, as a monument to
> the artillerymen who awaited an enemy that never came.