Fight at Ford Frederick

It’s been raining, so the wife and I decided to drive up the Big Pool and bike on the asphalt-paved Western Maryland Rail Trail.

Afterwards, I drove half a mile or so to Fort Frederick, which is truly the most curious thing I know of in America.

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 Fort Frederick and 190 acres of surrounding land, and in the 1930s the Civilian Conservation Corps restored the stone walls. In 1975 the barracks and outside-the-walls support buildings were rebuilt to 1757 specifications.

On this day, I had the Wee Wolves with me, and I took them off-leash for a few pictures in front of the stone walls.  No problem, and absolutely no one around.

I clipped the dogs back up, and went around the Fort to the single entrance, where I once again had the pups do a down-stay while I took off their leash to take a picture.

Do you see it?

I didn’t, until it was too late — a Groundhog right behind the dogs next to the bench.

The Groundhog saw me about the same time as I saw it, and as it ran to the center of the Fort, it attracted the attention of the dogs, who were on it in a blink.

Both dogs caught the groundhog, and it was a pile of chaotic fur until I jerked up Misto, put a foot on the groundhog, and finally got Moxie up as well.

Dogs now leashed, the Groundhog bolted off somewhere unseen. 

There was a bit of blood — Moxie caught a gash that turned out  to look worse than it was.  

To say the dogs and I went from a neutral to fourth gear in a few seconds does not quite capture it all.  The dogs were frenetic to get loose, but I set them up on a couple of barrels on the porch of one of the barracks to calm them down, which they did in short order.

Neither dog is worse for the wear, and neither was the Groundhog, based on its ability to skedaddle at speed. 

All’s well that ends well, but I was glad not to have an audience.  Who would imagine a Groundhog would be right there, next to the only door in a massive stone fort that was otherwise impregnable to man or beast?!