I biked to Fort Frederick on the C &O Canal from Four Locks.
Fort Frederick is a massive stone “star fort” built in 1757 during the French and Indian wars — an impressive bit of masonry.
There is only one entrance to the interior of the fort.
The walls are 17.5 feet high, stone, and at least 3 feet thick.
Each side of the fort is about 350 feet long, with 179 feet of curtain walls on each side which end in four very large diagonal bastions that project out from the wall and are designed to enable the corner positions to defend the main run of the walls.
The essential design goes back to the Middle Ages.
During the Revolutionary War, Fort Frederick was used as a prison for captured British soldiers.
After the war, Maryland sold the fort, and the surrounding land was farmed.
In 1860, the fort and surrounding farm land were bought by an African American by the name of Nathan Williams. Williams was the son of Samuel “Big Sam” Williams, a slave who in 1826 bought freedom for himself, his wife and his four children, and who himself bought a farm near Four Locks.
Nathan Williams and his family were successful farmers who expanded their holdings at Fort Frederick, built storage barns, and established the first school for black children in Washington County.
In 1923, the state of Maryland bought back the fort and 190 acres of surrounding land, and in the 1930s the Civilian Conservation Corps restored the stone walls, and in 1975 the barracks and outside-the-walls support buildings were rebuilt to 1757 specifications.
The first National Road (created by Thomas Jefferson) was started at nearby Cumberland and stretched to Ohio and eventually to Illinois. The Potomac River and C&O Canal are just a short walk away. History all around.
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