Fort Hunt

Fort Hunt occupies Sheridan Point on the Potomac River in Fairfax County, Virginia, where the Army built a coastal defense post between 1897 and 1906. Planned to guard Washington from naval attack, it was a subpost of Fort Washington and used the concrete-and-earth Endicott design. The complex once held four gun batteries and about 30 support buildings. Today the surviving pieces are Batteries Mount Vernon, Sater, Porter and Robinson, a concrete battery commander's station, a noncommissioned officer's house, and a quartermaster stable. The guns were removed during the First World War, and the post never saw action. Later it hosted a finance school, a Signal Corps company, and a World War II prisoner interrogation site, before the National Park Service developed it as a park. The batteries are overgrown and deteriorated, and the surrounding land has been altered by roads and park facilities. The remaining structures matter as individual remnants of the last defensive complex built on the Potomac.