| Fort Ruger | |
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| Part of U.S. Army Coast Artillery Corps | |
| Honolulu, Hawaiʻi | |
| Built | 1909 |
| In use | 190–Present |
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Fort Ruger Historic District
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| Location: | Diamond Head Rd., Honolulu, Hawaii |
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| Built: | 1911 |
| Governing body: | State |
| NRHP Reference#: | 83000249 |
| Added to NRHP: | July 14, 1983[1] |
Fort Ruger is a fort on the island of Oʻahu that served as the first military reservation in the Territory of Hawaii. Named after Civil War General Thomas H. Ruger and built in and around Diamond Head Crater, the fort was established by the United States in 1909 for the purpose of defending the harbor of its newly annexed territory.[2]
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Fort Ruger was the site of Battery Harlow, armed with eight 12-inch mortars. The fort's prominent location on Diamond Head made it a natural fire control station, with several posts built into Leahi Peak.[3]
Despite being listed on the National Register of Historic Places,[4] portions of the site are still used for training by the Hawaii National Guard.[5]
Few of the original buildings survive. The most striking are three sets of stone structures that mark former gates to the fort. On the Waikiki side, there is a pair of gateposts on either side of the sidewalk and a square stone bunker across the street with a gun slit in the outside wall and with crenels and merlons along the top, as if it were a battlement in a European castle. On the Kahala side is a larger stone gatehouse with rounded edges of the kind popular in the 1930s. Between them, on the Kaimuki side, is a purely decorative structure, a circular stonewalled planter with two jagged stone arches intersecting at 90-degree angles. It now stands at the edge of the Kapiolani Community College parking lot, but was once flanked by two large gun barrels.[6]
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