At the mouth of the Kennebec
River in Phippsburg,
Maine, stands old Fort Popham.
It’s not far from the original Popham Colony
of 1607, and like the colony, it’s named after George Popham.
Fort
Popham came along later
though, and it was just a small fortification during the American Revolution
(1765-1783).
In 1808 the federal
government built the site up into an embargo fort, and it was part of the
system that guarded the coast.
The fort
stayed manned until 1815 and saw some action in the War of 1812.
Construction of the fort that we see today began in 1861
during the American Civil War (1861-1865).
It was built in a crescent shape from granite rocks quarried from nearby
islands. Construction stopped in 1869
before the fort was completed, but additional work was done and it was
garrisoned again during the Spanish-American War (1898) and World War I
(1914-1918). Eventually, the newer Fort Baldwin
constructed in the early 1900s made Fort
Popham obsolete.
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| Fort Popham, Maine |
Fort
Popham is now part of the
National Register of Historic Places.
Now tourists come and eat fried fish and munch french fries and gulp
down soda while they look at a part of early American history. I don’t know why this makes me sad, but it
does. Perhaps it’s because an important
part of our history and protection is now just something to gawk at and take
photos. What would the original builders
of Fort Popham have thought of that? And how about the original settlers of the
Popham Colony who were here in Maine
long before the fort? What would they
think of a great fort built and then unmanned and abandoned and turned into a
tourist attraction?
There is a great deal of history in Maine
and all of New England that the rest of modern America does not share. There are roots here. There were real people who came here, settled
in Maine, lived and died, and began the early
part of what is now the United
States of America. For these people, it was not about tourism or
what people might read in history books.
These people were living the actual history, creating it as they went
about their daily lives of colonizing the “new world.”
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| Fort Popham, Maine |
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| Fort Popham, Maine |
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| Fort Popham, Maine |
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| Fort Popham, Maine |
