19 October 2006

Fort Ethan Allen

There is not much of it left, and I suppose it is more curious that there is anything left at all. The Downtown is being reconstructed, block-by-block, and when anything is saved it is only a brick or interesting stone facade. Quotations, nothing at all of substance.

The vast network of defenses around the city once bristled with cannon, capable of sweeping all lines of approach with fire.

What is left is purely accidental. The dogs saved Congressional Cemetery, east of the capital, which had degenerated into lawless anarchy. It was as old as the city, and the mighty of the young nation were interred there. The vaults of the famous were being looted for bones, and drug dealing and worse were common on the grounds until the first Yuppie pioneers began to renovate the old row houses. Their dogs needed exercise, and the cemetery was too old to have any living relatives to complain.

The dogs began to run free there. I was interested to see a Retriever lift a leg on the monument to an ancient Congressman when I first visited there. Sic transit gloria, I thought, but going to the dogs in this case meant that security returned, and people got interested in the history of those that lay there.

The rise of the art of embalming enabled bodies to be shipped to their homes, ended the need for the Visiting Vault, where the notables waited for monuments to be constructed back home.

The Union did not attempt to defend the District from the northern side of the Potomac, though the Long Bridge that crossed the river near downtown was fortified, and an extensive fortress was constructed on the Virginia side, south of where the Pentagon now looms.

Construction started shortly after the war began. Union troops occupied what is now Arlington County, and the independent city of Alexandria became a military depot. Fort Ward, the best preserved of the bastions, anchored the Arlington Line along the heights, and had clear lines of fire along the Little River Turnpike.

A line of Forts and bastions was thrown up along the south side of the Potomac on the heights, looking down at the brown river. They were connected by a military road, which is appropriately called Military Road today.

The network of forts and trenches ran further than the forty miles of the District diamond. The works were vast indeed, and filled with troops in blue serge uniforms.

When the war was over, and the threat of the Confederacy faded, the forts were abandoned and left to disintegrate. Arlington was impoverished. The plantation culture and economy were destroyed, and the great houses that survived fell on hard times.

The cannon were pulled out, of course, and anything worth taking was took. If you look at the corner of Ft. Ward that has been reconstructed, it is quite impressive. White-washed logs preserve the vertical lines of the earth. Heavy doors protect the magazines and the bomb-proof shelters, and the insignia of the regiments is proudly displayed.

Even with everything worth anything taken, for burning or for construction, the earth has a certain imperative. The structures that held up the thick earth of the shelters disintegrated and collapsed. The ramparts slumped into the moats, and the glacis of the bastions settled.

But the earth had a certain imperative, and it took a lot of energy to throw them up with shovel and mule-power. Unless someone made an effort to pull them down again, the gentle contours of the earth remained.

Arlington slumbered in deep depression for years. After the turn of the century, District residents began to construct cottages along the trolley lines that crossed the Potomac, and neighborhoods began to cluster around the stops.

The long slow recovery began to cover the old works.

A few of the gun emplacements remain on private property at Fort C.S. Smith, which has been honored with a small park.

I read that something similar was being planned for Fort Ethan Allen, the remains of which mark the end of the Military Road,  and the turn of the line along the river.

It was an impressive fortress in its time, with massive earthen walls and a perimeter of 736 yards, and emplacements for 39 guns. Officers quarters, small Headquarters. Places for the suttler's wagon and a few hundred artillery troops.

The Union seized the property of Gilbert Vanderwerken in 1861 to begin construction and command all the approaches to Chain Bridge south of Pimmit Run. It was desirable property then, and it is now. The neighborhood that stands there now has homes that are worth around a million a pop.

There was no military action at Fort Ethan Allen in the Civil War; the only attack on Washington-area forts was at Fort Stevens, north of the city, in 1864. The venerable Jubal Early led that assault to rattle the Union, and his troopers got off a shot in the direction of the sitting President, who was standing on the ramparts at the time.

Lincoln actually visited Fort Ethan Allen, one of the few visits to a Fort on the Virginia side of the river.

With the property being so expensive, it is unusual that anything remains at all. The embankments which still remain are heavily overgrown, mature trees and shrubs. If you did not know what you were looking at you might miss it. There are fifty yards of the south face, less the west bastion, which is under homes. The interior bombproof shelter remains as a low mound of earth and trees. It had been intended for protection against artillery fire from the adjacent Hall's Hill, if it was captured.

The mound that covers the magazine and guardhouse near the north face is still there, and a part of the east face.

An elementary school was plopped down on the Fort forty years ago, and most of it was bulldozed flat. It became Fort Ethan Allen Park, a multi-use facility of the Arlington County Government, and eventually was saved by the dogs again.

Until last year, the property around the bomb-proof was used as an off-leash dog facility. If you did not like dogs, or were concerned about what you stepped in, it was not an approachable historic site.

It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and included as a site in the Virginia Civil War Trails program. What is left is a patch of land just short of fifteen acres, with a soccer field, a Playground, Basketball Court, Community Canine Area and a  Gazebo.

The County says that they are going to restore the gate, and the guardpost.

I'll be interested to see it when complete. I was crawling around in one of the trenches last weekend, and squinting real hard, you could almost tell there had been something very large there, not so long ago.

Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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