Fort Mahan: Cultural Landscape Inventory, National Capital Parks - East - Fort Circle Park-East, National Park Service

Lester, Molly

Cultural Landscape Inventory park report for Fort Mahan managed by administrative unit National Capital Parks - East. Fort Mahan, Reservation 475, is an approximately 38.25 acre park located in northeast Washington, DC, approximately 3.5 miles northeast of the United States Capitol and 3 miles south of Bladensburg, Maryland. Fort Mahan is a component landscape of the Civil War Defenses of Washington. Fort Mahan is bordered on the west by Minnesota Avenue NE, on the south by Benning Road NE, on the east by 42nd Street NE, and on the north by Grant Street NE. Fort Mahan is listed on the National Register as part of the 1974 Civil War Fort Sites nomination and the 1977 Defenses of Washington revision of the 1974 nomination. The National Register lists Fort Mahan’s period of significance as 1861-1865. The fort is listed on the National Register for its military significance. This CLI argues that Fort Mahan is eligible under National Register Criteria A, C, and D, and recommends expanding the period of significance to include the years 1901 to 1941. Expanding the period of significance will recognize Fort Mahan’s role in the development of parks and recreation in Washington, DC, as well as the Civilian Conservation Corps’ involvement in landscape beautification and restoration projects at the site from 1933 to 1941. Fort Mahan was one of the 68 forts built as a defensive ring around Washington at the start of the Civil War. It was sited and designed to protect the Benning Road Bridge over the Anacostia River, as well as the Navy Yard and the Federal Arsenal nearby. By December of 1861, the fort was authorized to host garrisoned soldiers, although the majority of them stayed in the tent city near the outerworks. Fort Mahan did not have permanent barracks until 1862, when a storm damaged the tents and necessitated the construction of sturdier housing for the fort’s soldiers and laborers. By 1865, the buildings at Fort Mahan included a guardhouse, an officers’ quarters, and several other frame and log structures within the earthworks. Fort Mahan was modified several times over the war, as engineers addressed vulnerabilities in the views available from the hilltop earthworks. General Jubal Early’s attack on Fort Stevens in July of 1864 instilled new urgency in the efforts to address Fort Mahan’s design flaws, although the fort never saw direct action. The creation of the park at Fort Mahan corresponded with the formation of the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression, and in 1935, a CCC camp was established to serve Fort Mahan and other nearby park sites. The CCC projects at Fort Mahan, conducted between 1935 and 1941, included forest protection, the infill of borrow pits, channeling of a spring, grading of the hill, and the construction of a picnic area (likely on the cleared hilltop) and a quarter-mile gravel road on the east side of the site. Annual reports for the District of Columbia also indicate that there were two playing fields on the site by 1940—probably on the hilltop and perhaps on the grassy area closer to the roads. Today, Fort Mahan is situated in the midst of a largely residential neighborhood of Benning in northeast DC. Its Civil War earthworks are largely demolished or deteriorated, although some fragments remain visible. The landscape retains most of the vegetation pattern and the features from its twentieth century conversion to a park, with a cleared hilltop, overgrown hillsides, and a grassy periphery near the streets. This CLI finds that Fort Mahan retains integrity from the twentieth century period of significance (1901 to 1941), and retains limited integrity from the Civil War-era period of significance (1861 to 1865). Fort Mahan displays the seven aspects that determine integrity as defined by the National Register of Historic Places (location, design, setting, feeling, materials, workmanship, and association) through the retention of landscape characteristics and features

Fort Mahan: Cultural Landscape Inventory, National Capital Parks - East - Fort Circle Park-East, National Park Service

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