page_title: Fort Monroe
section_title: Coast Artillery School
hierarchical_section_title: Fort Monroe / History / Coast Artillery School
context_page_description: Fort Monroe, preserved as the Fort Monroe National Monument, is a decommissioned military installation in Hampton, Virginia, at Old Point Comfort, the southern tip of the Virginia Peninsula, United States. Along with Fort Wool, Fort Monroe originally guarded the navigation channel between the Chesapeake Bay and Hampton Roads—the natural roadstead at the confluence of the Elizabeth, the Nansemond and the James rivers. Until disarmament in 1946, the areas protected by the fort were the entire Chesapeake Bay and Potomac River regions, including the water approaches to the cities of Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland, along with important shipyards and naval bases in the Hampton Roads area. Surrounded by a moat, the six-sided bastion fort is the largest fort by area ever built in the United States.
  During the initial exploration by a mission headed by Captain Christopher Newport in the early 1600s, the earliest days of the Colony of Virginia, the site was identified as a strategic defensive location. Beginning by 1609, defensive fortifications were built at Old Point Comfort during Virginia's first two centuries.
context_section_description: In 1907 the Coast Artillery School was established along with the U.S. Army Coast Artillery Corps. New buildings were constructed for classrooms and barracks, with the library and school buildings completed in 1909. As part of the school's responsibility the Journal of the United States Artillery (renamed Coast Artillery Journal in 1922) was published under the supervision of the commandant. The school operated until 1946 when most of the coast artillery was disbanded, and the school was moved to Fort Winfield Scott in San Francisco.
caption: 1918 photo of a battery of 12-inch mortars at Fort Monroe
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