Fort Howard

Fort Howard. "The Bulldog at Baltimore's Gate". , Imagine a line of huge enemy warships sailing up the Chesapeake Bay and into the Patapsco River intent on bombarding and invading Baltimore. It happened right here at North Point in 1814 when the British landed 4000 troops and sent a squadron of gunboats up the river to attack Fort McHenry. Baltimore turned back the British in 1814, but we never forgot that fearful event and how vulnerable our coastal cities were to attack by sea., By 1885 America's obsolete coast defenses led Congress to create a board to identify those port cities where defenses were lacking and to recommend upgrades to military installations at those locations. Full funding for those improvements took another decade to be implemented, but by 1898, construction began in earnest, spurred by war with Spain and the fear of Spanish naval attack against a relatively unprotected coastline., Baltimore was high on the list of those cities where new installations were needed. Fort Howard and three others on the Patapsco including Fort Smallwood, Fort Armistead, and Fort Carroll, were built or modified to house state-of-the-art, breech-loading artillery and electrically controlled mines., Construction of Fort Howard's batteries began in 1897, ad by 1903 the entrance tot he harbor of Baltimore bristled with thirty-six artillery pieces and scores of mines at the ready., In 1908 a local newspaper reporting on the completion of the four forts called "The Bulldog at Baltimore's Gate.", For two decades the four forts watched over the Patapsco, but by 1922 new 16-inch batteries at Fort Story near the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay made the Baltimore and Washington forts redundant. The last gun battery defending Baltimore was deactivated in 1927., Five of the concrete gun batteries are still here at the park. Feel free to explore them and imagine the days over a century ago when they were inhabited by huge guns and companies of artillerymen ready to defend our freedom.