Fort Dupont Park

This article is about the National Park in Washington, D.C.. For the state park in Delaware, see Fort DuPont State Park. For the neighborhood of Washington, D.C., see Fort Dupont.
Fort DuPont Park

Location within Washington, D.C.

Location Washington, D.C.
Coordinates 38°52′38″N 76°57′01″W / 38.8773345°N 76.9502523°WCoordinates: 38°52′38″N 76°57′01″W / 38.8773345°N 76.9502523°W
Area 400-acre
Operated by National Park Service
Website www.nps.gov/fodu/

Fort DuPont Park is a 376-acre (1.52 km2) wooded park under the management of the National Park Service located in Washington, DC. The name of the park comes from the old Civil War earthwork fort that lies within the park. The fort was one of several designed to defend Washington D.C. from a Confederate attack during the Civil War. There are few remains of the actual fortifications. The 400-acre site is one Washington D.C.’s largest parks and protects an important sub-watershed of the Anacostia River. The park is a popular place for picnics, nature walks, indoor ice skating, mountain bike riding, gardening, environmental education, music, skating, sports, and ranger led Civil War programs.

Adjacent Parks

Fort DuPont National Park is adjacent to a series of other National and DC parks. Commonly people refer to all of them as Fort DuPont. The adjacent parks are:

Facilities

Riding Mountain Bikes along the Fort DuPont Hiker Biker Trail

Concert Venue

Fort Dupont has a forty year history of offering a summer concert series.[1] Many famous musicians and bands in the Washington D.C. area have played this venue.

Hiker-Biker Trail

The Hiker -Biker trail in Fort Dupont is the primary trail, however, there are various side spur trails throughout the parks. While most call the entire park Fort Dupont Park, it is actually four adjacent parks, Fort Chaplin, Fort Dupont, Fort Davis and Fort Stanton and the trails run through them all from Grant St SE (north of Benning) south to Erie St SE near the Avalon Playground. There are about a total of 10 miles of trails.

History

Fort DuPont was an earthwork fort built in 1861 completed in spring 1862 and in use till 1865 when it was abandoned. The land was owned by Micheal Canton prior to the war and returned to him afterward. The fort was a hexagon with 100-foot-long (30 m) sides; inside was a flag pole, deep well, officer quarters, barracks, outside was a guard house. Fort DuPont was an artillery installation defending the eastern approaches of Washington. During the war the following pieces were at the fort:

Fort DuPont never fired guns in hostile action, however after the surrender of Confederate forces at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865, according to John Longyear, "the Chain of forts around the city and the batteries of field artillery between, made a ring of cannons around the city which were fired for several hours. The line of cannon salutes running round and round the other always proceeding in the same direction, so that it went round and round the circuit 20 to 30 miles".[3]

References

  1. ↑ "Fort Dupont Park Summer Concert Series 40th Anniversary video July 29, 2012". Retrieved 2014-04-29.
  2. ↑ Cooling III, Benjamin Franklin; Owen II, Walton H. (6 October 2009). Mr. Lincoln's Forts: A Guide to the Civil War Defenses of Washington. Scarecrow Press. pp. 214–216. ISBN 978-0-8108-6307-1.
  3. ↑ A HISTORIC RESOURCE STUDY: THE CIVIL WAR DEFENSES OF WASHINGTON: PART 2, USDOI, 1998

External links