Fort Monroe is one of the oldest continuously occupied posts in the United States Army. It is the only casemate / moated fort that the Army has left. Due to the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC), TRADOC Headquarters will be moving up Interstate 64 to Fort Eustis, Virginia. The future of Fort Monroe is unknown at this point.
Fort Monroe has been in use since 1934 and was one of the only Forts in the South during the Civil War that never fell into Confederate hands. Robert E Lee as a young officer and engineer had a hand in designing the fortifications there and its annex, Fort Wool, which guarded the middle waters between Fort Monroe and Norfolk, Virginia. Lee’s first child was born at Fort Monroe.
Because of his first hand knowledge of Fort Monroe he decided not to waste precious resources trying to capture this heavily fortified location during the Civil War. This led Fort Monroe to be the launching point for the Peninsula Campaign against Richmond, the fall of Norfolk and the siege of Petersburg. It was the embarking points for the blockade and fall of Wilmington, North Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia.
Off its shoals occurred one of the most monumental battles in naval warfare, the Battle of the Monitor and the Virginia (Merrimack). The battle between these two ironclads virtually brought to an end the era of wooden warships and started a naval arms race in countries all around the globe.
Fort Monroe was the original Camp David; presidents starting with Andrew Jackson used Fort Monroe as a retreat from the politics of Washington. There was a resort there, it was temperate during the summertime due to the breezes and it was easy to get to by horse, rail or boat. Abraham Lincoln visited there several times during the Civil War and indeed personally witnessed the attack and fall of Norfolk from the parapets at Fort Wool. It was at Fort Monroe that Confederate President Jefferson Davis was kept prisoner after he was captured at the end of the war. It was once the home to the Army Artillery School.
The Peninsula of Virginia is where history happens; Yorktown, Williamsburg and Jamestown are all within 17 miles of each other. Jamestown is the first permanent English Colony and Yorktown is where the nation was officially born. Nearby is Petersburg, where the siege that for all intents and purposes really ended the Civil War took place. All of these are in very close proximately to Fort Monroe, Fort Eustis, Fort Lee and Fort Story. For the kids there is Bush Gardens, The Old Country, with a huge water park just outside of Williamsburg. Besides the above listed Army bases there is the Norfolk Naval Base and Air Station, the world’s largest Naval Base, Oceana Naval Air Station, the Navy’s Master Jet Base on the east coast, Camp Elmore Marine Corps Base, Little Creek Amphibious Base and Langley Air Force Base and NASA facility
The Mariner Museum in Hampton, Virginia, is the one of the premier maritime museums in the world. It is also home of the Monitor Center and the artifacts recovered from the USS Monitor from off Cape Hatteras where she sank in a winter storm in late 1863. This includes her famous turret, her guns, anchor, propeller, and steam engine. Northrop Grumman the company that builds the Navy’s nuclear carriers at Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock has built a full size replica of the Monitor for this exhibit and you can walk the deck and get a real feel for this famous warship.
Charles City on the James River outside of Williamsburg is the birthplace of Benjamin Harrison, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and Presidents William Henry Harrison and John Tyler. Their homes still stand today. This is where TAPS was written during the Civil War. Robert E. Lee spent much of his boyhood here, and Edmund Ruffin, who fired the first shot of the Civil War at Fort Sumter, lived there. The first black American missionary to Africa and founding father of Liberia, Lott Cary, was born here. Charles City was home to one of the first free black communities in America as well as the third oldest organized free black church in the United States.
If you love American history, a visit to this area is a must on your list.