Abbreviated Fort Point Historic Structure Report for Fort Point National Historic Site (NHS) in California. Published by the National Park Service (NPS).
Brochure 'The Lights of Fort Point ' for Fort Point National Historic Site (NHS) in California. Published by the National Park Service (NPS).
https://www.nps.gov/fopo/index.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Point,_San_Francisco
Fort Point is a masonry seacoast fortification located at the southern side of the Golden Gate at the entrance to San Francisco Bay.
From its vantage point overlooking the spectacular Golden Gate, Fort Point defended the San Francisco Bay following California's Gold Rush through World War II. Its beautifully arched casemates display the art of 3rd system brick masonry and interacts gracefully with the Golden Gate Bridge.
Fort Point is located at the south anchorage of the Golden Gate Bridge at the end of Marine Drive on the Presidio of San Francisco. By car take Highway 101 N or S, exit at the Golden Gate Bridge toll plaza at south end of bridge. From S turn right at end of exit ramp, or from N go straight on Merchant Drive. Turn left onto Lincoln Boulevard. Take a left onto Long Avenue and follow onto Marine Drive.
Fort Point National Historic Site
Rangers at Fort Point provide information, tours and demonstrations. A small Sutler's Store in the fort offers park passport stamps and some merchandise related to Civil War and local history.
Fort Point from Marine Drive
Fort Point with visitors approaching on road in front and Golden Gate Bridge above.
Fort Point offers stunning views from under the south end of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Fort Point Sunset View
Golden sunset light on the roof of Fort Point with Golden Gate Bridge and bay behind.
Visitors can enjoy winter sunsets from the top of Fort Point.
Brick Casemates
Arched red brick casemates extend into the distance at Fort Point.
Fort Point is known for its masterful masonry work.
Civil War Days at Fort Point
A cannon stands in front of Civil War re-enactors talking to the public.
Visitors can interact with Civil War re-enactors twice in January and August at the Fort.
Fort Point Lighthouse
View of Fort Point lighthouse through red brick arches
Fort Point has a historic lighthouse mounted on its top.
NPS Geodiversity Atlas—Fort Point National Historic Site, California
Each park-specific page in the NPS Geodiversity Atlas provides basic information on the significant geologic features and processes occurring in the park. Links to products from Baseline Geologic and Soil Resources Inventories provide access to maps and reports.
fort parade grounds with golden gate bridge above
The Civil War at Golden Gate
The National Park Service is commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Civil War (1861 – 1865.) We acknowledge this defining event in our nation’s history and its legacy in continuing to fight for civil rights.
Fort Point
Southwest National Parks Climate Roundtable Webinar Recording Now Available
Following the publication of the Fourth National Climate Assessment Volume II: Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States (NCA4), the National Park Service began hosting a series of roundtable webinars to convey relevant findings to national parks. Each roundtable covers one of the 10 geographic regions defined in the report. This month, they hosted their seventh regional installment, the Southwest Parks NCA4 Roundtable.
Fourth National Climate Assessment: What Does it Mean for National Parks in the Southwest Region?
Fort Point
The Fort has been called "the pride of the Pacific," "the Gibraltar of the West Coast," and "one of the most perfect models of masonry in America." When construction began during the height of the California Gold Rush, Fort Point was planned as the most formidable deterrence America could offer to a naval attack on California.
Fort Point and Golden Gate strait before the Golden Gate Bridge
Third System of Coastal Forts
How should a country protect its borders? The United States had to consider this question when the War of 1812 ended in 1815. One year later, the federal government believed it had an answer. The nation created a broad national defense strategy that included a new generation of waterfront defenses called the Third System of Coastal Fortifications.
The setting sun lights a stone fort wall where a US flag flies high.
Seacoast Ordnance
Cannon manufactured for use in Third System forts are called seacoast ordnance. These were some of the largest and heaviest cannon available at the time. Cannon at forts Pickens, McRee, Barrancas, Massachusetts, and Advanced Redoubt fell into three categories: guns, howitzers, and mortars. Each had a specific purpose.
Pacific Border Province
The Pacific Border straddles the boundaries between several of Earth's moving plates on the western margin of North America. This region is one of the most geologically young and tectonically active in North America. The generally rugged, mountainous landscape of this province provides evidence of ongoing mountain-building.
Drakes Estero in Point Reyes National Seashore. NPS photo/Sarah Codde
Series: Physiographic Provinces
Descriptions of the physiographic provinces of the United States, including maps, educational material, and listings of Parks for each.
George B. Dorr, founder of Acadia National Park
POET Newsletter February 2014
Pacific Ocean Education Team (POET) newsletter from February 2014. Articles include: A Beacon of Light for the Channel Islands; A Challenging Place; Isolation within Isolation; Destruction Island Lighthouse
A black and white historic photo of the Destruction Island lighthouse tower on a bluff top.
Rare Damselflies in Distress: Scientists Work to Sustain an At-Risk Species in the Presidio
This year has been a roller coaster for scientists keeping tabs on the Bay Area’s most at-risk insect—the San Francisco forktail damselfly. They’ve had some good news—the first population estimate in five years revealed stable numbers despite the drought—but also been confronted with diminishing water levels threatening the species' remaining stronghold near Fort Point like never before.
Iridescent black, green, and blue insect with a long, slender abdomen and long, folded wings.
Mary Lange
Mary C. Lange served at Fort Point as the sole hospital matron, and one of few women, in the period 1861-1862 at the recently constructed brick garrison that protected Unionist San Francisco from Confederate attack by water during the US Civil War. While no military threat materialized, Lange’s work exemplifies the expanded roles women began to play in medical support during the Civil War.
Artistic rendering of long room with arched ceilings and hospital beds
Staff Spotlight: Rebecca Au and Jackson Lam
Meet Rebecca Au and Jackson Lam!
Becca and Jackson at Muir Woods on Earth Day 2022
Series: Pacific Ocean Education Team (POET) Newsletters
From 2009 to 2015, the Pacific Ocean Education Team published a series of short newsletters about the health of the ocean at various National Park Service sites in and around the Pacific Ocean. Topics covered included the 2010 tsunami, marine debris, sea star wasting disease, ocean acidification, and more.
Ocean waves wash in from the right onto a forested and rocky shoreline.
Series: Women's History in the Pacific West - California-Great Basin Collection
Biographies from Northern California, Central Valley, Sierra Nevada Mountains and Nevada
Map of northern California, Central Valley, Sierra Nevada Mountains and Nevada
Fort Point
National Historic Site
California
National Park Service
U.S. Department of the lnterior
i*
L
I
",I
key to the whole Pacific coast"
"The
At the outbreak
Fort
of the Civil War, newly constructed
Point stood as a prime example of the u.S. Army's most
sophisticated coastal fortifications. Military officials declared its position at the Golden Gate as the "key to the
whole Pacific Coast"l its massiye brick walls looked to be
impenetrable. Even as its praises were being sung, ne\ry
rifled artillery was in use that could bore through masonry
walls-as had happened at similar forts on the East Coast.
Fort Point neyer saw action.It surviyes as a monument to a
bygone era and a place where you can explore life at a
coastal defense garrison in the 1860s.
I
I
;
Sentinel at th
E
The entrance to San Francisco Bay
has long been the site of human
habitation. The earliest residents of
the area, ancestors of the Ohlone
and Miwok peoples, depended on
the bay's waters for food and
transportation. There is evidence
from about 4,000 years ago of an
Ohlone village located about a mile
from Foft Point along the shore.
Left; Fort Point, 1870. Above: Ohlone
Indian and canoe.
The Castillo de San Joaquin
ln 1769 Gaspar de Portol6's overland expedition reached San FranE cisco Bay. By 1776
Spain had
I6
o
established the area's first Euroo
(f
o pean settlement, with a mission
d
L
and a presidio (military post).
Fearful of encroachment by the
British and Russians, Spain fodified the high white cliff at the narrowest paft of the bay's entrance,
where Fort Point now stands. The
Castillo de San Joaquin, built in
(
1794, was an adobe structure
ll
housing 9 to 13 cannon. The little
fortress guarded the Spanish
1
colony until 1821, when Mexico
won independence from Spain and
gained control of the region.
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Above left: Spanish flag from 1793;
Spanish soldier, 1770s. .Lbove'. Mexican
flag;left: Bear flag, symbol of the 1846
revolt during which U.S. citizens in California banded together to overthrow
Mexican rule.
Golden Gate
ln 1835 the Mexican army moved
I
to Sonoma and the castillo's adobe
walls were left to crumble in the
wind and rain. War broke out between Mexico and the United
States in 1846. On July 1, U.S.Army
officer John Charles Fr6mont, along
with Kit Carson and a band of 10
followers, stormed the castillo and
spiked the cannons. They discovered that the fortress was empty.
After the United States prevailed in
the Mexican War in 1848, California
was ceded to the U.S. The gold
strike that year at Sutter's Mill on
the American River lured tens of
thousands of prospectors. Most of
the "Fortyniners" arrived by sea,
making San Francisco the major
West Coast harbor as of 1849.
When California became the 31st
state in 1850, the U.S. Army and
Navy officials recommended a
series of foftifications to secure San
Francisco Bay. Coastal defenses
were built at Alcatraz, Fod Mason,
and Fort Point (see map below left).
Fort Point and the Civil War
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
began work on Fort Point in 1853.
Plans specified that the lowest tier
of artillery be as close as possible
to water level so cannonballs could
ricochet across the water's surface
Workers blasted the 9O-foot cliff
down to 15 feet above sea level.
The structure featured 7-foot thick
walls and multi-tiered casemated
construction typical of Third System
forts (see diagram on the reverse
side of this brochure). lt was sited
,
to defend the maximum amount of
harbor area. While there were more
than 30 such forts on the East
i
Coast, Fort Point was the only one ',
(see
built on the West Coast
map at I
i
left).
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.9
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Point
t
Fort
Mason
SAN FRAN C/SCO
Top: Third System seacoast defenses on
the eve of the CivilWar. Above; San Francisco Bay's defenses (red dots) at Fort
Point, Alcatraz, and Fort Mason. Circles
indicate the range of fire-about 2 miles-
for each forffication.
A l)-inch Columbiad cannon at Fort
Sumter South Carolina. Two such cannons were mounted at Fort Point during
the CivilWar.
General lnformation
ln 1854, lnspector General Joseph
F.K. Mansfield declared "this point
as the key to the whole Pacific
Coast...and it should receive untiring exertions." A crew of 200, many
unemployed miners, labored for
eight years on the fort. ln 1861 , with
war looming, the Army mounted the
fort's first cannon. Col. Albert Sidney Johnston, commander of the
Depaftment of the Pacific, prepared
Bay Area defenses and ordered in
the first troops to the fort. Kentuckyborn Johnston then resigned his
commission to join the Confederate
Army; he was killed at the Battle of
Shiloh in 1862.
Throughout the Civil War, artillerymen at Fort Point stood guard for
an enemy that never came. The
Confederate raider CSS Shenandoah planned to attack San Francisco, but on the way to t
National Park Service
U.S. Department of the Interior
Fort Point National Historic Site
Golden Gate National Recreation Area
Abbreviated Fort Point Historic Structure Report
Abbreviated Fort Point Historic Structure Report
Fort Point National Historic Site
Golden Gate National Recreation Area
Fort Mason, Building 201
San Francisco, California
Produced by the Cultural Resources & Museum Management Division
Golden Gate National Recreation Area
National Park Service
U.S. Department of the Interior
Washington, DC
September 2006
Front cover photo:
A view of Fort Point, circa 1869. Credit: Fort Point NHS
Collection, Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
inside front page photo:
View of Fort Point, circa 1869. Credit: National Archives,
Record Group 77
Back cover photo:
This photo, dated 1910, shows the Fort Point lighthouse
keeper’s residences located at the south of the fort.
Credit: Fort Point NHS Collection, Golden Gate National
Recreation Area.
Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................... 8
Developmental History ........................................................................... 14
Fort Point: Sentry at Golden Gate ............................................. 14
Chronology of Fort Point Development & Use ......................... 28
1776-1852: Castillo de San Joaquin ................................... 28
1853-1860: Initial Construction ........................................ 30
1861-1868: The Civil War & the First Garrison.................... 35
1868-1906: Dire Straights ................................................. 37
1907-1930: Detention Barracks WWI, Army Use ............... 45
1931-1940: Golden Gate Bridge Construction .................. 49
1941-1945: World War II ................................................... 54
1946-1970: The Move Toward Preservation: Establishment
of the Fort Point Museum Association .............................. 55
1970-1998: National Park Service Stewardship................... 57
Physical Description .................................................................... 74
Conditions Assessment and Material Investigations .............. 100
Treatment & Work Recommendations ................................................. 122
Evaluation of Restoration Work to Date ................................ 122
Secretary of the Interior’s Standards ........................................124
Requirement for Treatments & Use (Outline) ..........................125
Treatment Recommendations (Outline) ...................................125
Bibliography ........................................................................................... 126
Glossary .................................................................................................. 130
Appendices A: Floor Plans..................................................................... 133
Appendices B: List of Fort Point Documents ........................................151
Appendices C: Supplemental Record of Work Performed ................. 152
Left: Photo of Fort Point during
winter of 2000. Photo circa 2000.
Credit: Su Chu-Way, Golden Gate
National Recreation Area.
7 Fort Point Historic Structures Report
Introduction
Fort Point became part of the National Park Service
in 1970 and has been administered by Golden Gate
National Recreation Area since that park was created in 1972. Since then, the National Park Service
has conducted significant research on the Fort in
order make the best building rehabilitation decisions. This Abbreviated Fort Point Historic Structure
Report is a synthesis of most of the research conducted to-date and makes references to other related
reports and studies. The appendices also contain
floor plans and a list of Fort Point documents.
However, this Abbreviated Fort Point Historic
Structure Report does not contain a completed
Treatment Recommendations section that is one
of the critical components of a standard historic
structure report; hence the title “Abbreviated”
Fort Point Historic Structure Report. The historic
preservation consultants Carey & Co. wrote an
outline for this section which provides guidance
for future work. It is the National Park Service’s
hope that the treatment recommendations work
will be conducted by a historical architect in the
near future.
Preparation
At Carey & Co. (460 Bush Street, San Francisco,
CA 415-773-0773), individuals included Alice
Carey, Principal; Nancy Goldenberg, Project
Manager; and Heidi Stosick.
American War, and World War II. The fort is now
recognized as one of the best-preserved “Third
System” forts in the United States.
Originally built to protect the entrance to San
Francisco Bay during the Gold Rush, Fort Point
was garrisoned throughout the Civil War in anticipation of enemy attack either by Confederate
naval forces or by Confederate insurgents living
in California. In 1863, the U.S. Lighthouse Board
erected a hexagonal iron lighthouse on the fort’s
ro
National Park Service
U.S. Department of the Interior
The Lights of Fort Point
Fort Point National Historic Site
Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives
Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives
Over the past 150 years, three lighthouses have stood at this point. With its
propensity for high winds and strong currents, as well as submerged shoals and
frequent fog, Fort Point was an easy choice as one of the nine sites selected by
Congress in 1850 for West Coast lighthouses. In the midst of the Gold Rush, San
Francisco’s harbor became one of the busiest in the world and navigating the
hazardous Golden Gate took a heavy toll, littering the area with shipwrecks.
Today, many visitors may not recognize the steel lighthouse tower atop the fort for
what it is. . . or was—a guiding light for mariners passing through the Golden Gate
for nearly 70 years. Living beside the lighthouse and the fort were its keepers, a
small community of families that had a starkly different lifestyle than the
soldiers of the fort, one protecting merchant shipping and the other guarding
against invading ships.
Fort Point light and keepers’
houses.
In December 1852, work began on the first
of three lighthouses at Fort Point. The first
lighthouse was built on the site of the old
Spanish fort, Castillo de San Joaquin, on a
90-foot-high cliff. Completed by mid-1853,
the light had yet to go into operation when
it was torn down to cut away the underlying
bluff to build the massive fort.
Lighting the Point
The third lighthouse, which still stands
today, was placed on a metal tower capping
one of the fort's circular stairways. At 106
feet above sea level, the light could be seen
by sailors along the entire horizon. A larger
fourth-order Fresnel lens soon replaced the
smaller original lens. The last keeper locked
the door to the lighthouse on September 1,
1934, when the rising Golden Gate Bridge
blocked the light and muffled the sound of
the fog signal. The lighthouse was soon
replaced with an automated light and fog
signal installed on the south bridge pier.
First lighthouse.
U.S. Lighthouse Society
Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives
National Archives and Records Administration
A second lighthouse was built beside the
brick fort, and in March of 1855, sailors first
saw a beacon shine from Fort Point.
Mounted in a four-sided tower 52 feet
above the water, the lantern had the
smallest lens on the coast. This second
lighthouse served until 1863 when
construction of a new sea wall around the
fort necessitated its removal.
Second lighthouse.
Third lighthouse, 1930s.
rev. 7/05
Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives
Signals in the Mist
Fog bell on the side of the fort.
cannon muzzles. In fact, by 1869, firing of
the guns had badly battered both the fog
bell and the keepers' nerves.
One could describe the life of a 19th
Century lighthouse keeper as isolated and
monotonous, but it was dangerous as well.
Lighthouses were on islands or remote
stretches of coast, surrounded by wind and
waves. A trip to town or a visit from the
lighthouse tender was a major event.
Keepers often passed the time by reading,
raising livestock, and gardening. Often the
keeper's family lived at the site and helped
with the duties. One of the first roles for
women in government service was as lighthouse keepers. Fort Point had five female
assistant keepers between 1860 and 1870.
Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives
Keepers of the Light
Lonely yet comforting, the sounds of fog
horns bring a feeling of nostalgia to many
San Franciscans. For those on ships
negotiating the fog-shrouded Golden Gate,
the fog signals meant security and safety.
From the 1850s through 1904, a bell chimed
from Fort Point when the fog was in. A
clockwork mechanism rang the bell, and if
the mechanism failed, the keepers or their
spouses rang the bell manually, a task
requiring them to risk their lives by climbing down a windswept ladder on the side
of the fort only to stand below the fort's
A hand-cranked tram lifted supplies to the keepers’ houses.
150 Years of Bay Area
Lighthouses
The San Francisco Bay lighthouse system
became the most extensive on the West
Coast, with 14 lights from the Golden Gate
to the Sacramento Delta. The earliest of
those lights started operating on Alcatraz
Island over 150 years ago.
Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives
Three of the first nine lights are now in the
Golden Gate National Parks—Alcatraz
Island, Fort Point, and Point Bonita. All of
the lighthouses around the bay have gone
the way of those elsewhere in the world;
they have become automated and no longer
require keepers. And so is lost a way of life.
A Sobering Tale
Printed on recycled paper
using soy-based ink
The bell was eventually replaced by a fog
trumpet after San Francisco's largest
maritime disaster. On a foggy morning in
1901, the City of Rio de Janeiro struck the
rocks off Fort Point, taking over 100 lives
as it slipped beneath the waves.
At least two keepers were needed to
operate the fort’s lighthouse. Keepers
scrubbed,