BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Circle Forts -- Fort Reno Park and Reservoir

DC -- Circle Forts -- Fort Reno Park and Reservoir:

Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.

Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon

underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.

Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

Spiders: The system has identified your IP as being a spider. I love well-behaved spiders! They are, in fact, how most people find my site. Unfortunately, my network has a limited bandwidth and pictures take up bandwidth. Spiders ask for lots and lots of pages and chew up lots and lots of bandwidth which slows things down considerably for regular folk. To counter this, you'll see all the text on the page but the images are being suppressed. Also, a number of options like merges are being blocked for you. Note: Permission is NOT granted for spiders, robots, etc to use the site for AI-generation purposes. I'm excited for your ability to make revenue from my work but there's nothing in that for my human users or for me. If you are in fact human, please email me at guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can check if your designation was made in error. Given your number of hits, that's unlikely but what the hell.

Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]

Share: Facebook Twitter Digg
[1] FTRENO_100403_01.JPG	[2] FTRENO_100403_06.JPG	[3] FTRENO_100403_18.JPG
[4] FTRENO_100403_22.JPG	[5] FTRENO_100403_24.JPG	[6] FTRENO_100403_33.JPG
[7] FTRENO_100403_42.JPG	[8] FTRENO_100403_47.JPG	[9] FTRENO_100403_52.JPG
[10] FTRENO_100403_64.JPG	[11] FTRENO_101113_02.JPG	[12] FTRENO_101113_12.JPG
[13] FTRENO_101113_19.JPG	[14] FTRENO_101113_27.JPG	[15] FTRENO_101113_32.JPG
[16] FTRENO_101113_35.JPG	[17] FTRENO_101113_39.JPG	[18] FTRENO_101113_43.JPG
[19] FTRENO_101113_48.JPG	[20] FTRENO_101113_52.JPG	[21] FTRENO_101113_62.JPG
[22] FTRENO_101113_70.JPG	[23] FTRENO_101113_76.JPG	[24] FTRENO_101113_78.JPG
[25] FTRENO_101113_80.JPG	[26] FTRENO_101113_90.JPG

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. FTRENO_101113_39.JPG: The Civil War Defenses of Washington Fort Reno The site of this fort was selected in August, 1861. First called Fort Pennsylvania, the fort was located at an elevation of 430 feet, commanding three important roads which entered the city from the northwest in the vicinity of what is now Wisconsin and Nebraska Avenues, NW.
2. FTRENO_101113_78.JPG: National Park Service Highest Natural Elevation In cooperation with the D.C. Association of Land Surveyors and the Highpointers Club Point Reno Elev. 409 ft. 2007 Washington D.C.
Wikipedia Description: Fort Reno Park
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fort Reno Park is a park in the Tenleytown neighborhood of Washington, DC. It is the highest point in the city, and was involved in the only Civil War battle to take place in the District of Columbia. The highpoint was resurveyed and a new USGS Benchmark was placed in 2007 at coordinates N 38.95198 and W 77.075922, a location open to the general public and outside the fenced area where the highpoint was previously believed to be.. Fort Reno, at 409 feet, is actually lower than the top of the Washington Monument, which rises 555 feet from nearly sea level. However, the sandstone castle-like fort structure on top and highpoint antenna farm raise the height above that of the monument. Residents gather here on the 4th of July to look down on the annual fireworks display on the Mall.

Construction:

In early August 1861, engineers under Major John G. Barnard, in charge of the defenses of Washington, chose the highest point in the District of Columbia for the construction of a fort, with construction starting in earnest in August 1861 with the arrival of McCall's Division of Pennsylvania Reserves. The Utica Morning Herald (NY) of December 16, 1862 gives credit for the building of the fort specifically to the Ninth Regiment Pennsylvania Reserves, however it is known that other regiments of McCall's division were engaged in its construction and that of other forts in the vicinity. At the time the structure was named Fort Pennsylvania and was only renamed Fort Reno in 1863 in honor of Major General Jesse Lee Reno who died at the Battle of South Mountain in 1862. It was one of a string of forts circling Washington to defend it against the Confederates.

Work on the fort was continued by the succession of regiments stationed at the Tennallytown encampment after McCall's division moved to Langley on October 9, 1861. Of these regiments the 119th Pennsylvania is popularly given credit for having "built the fort" in August and October 1862, however, Fort Pennsylvania had been worked on prior to the 119th Regiment's arrival by the regiments of Peck's Brigade (which were stationed at Tennallytown from October 1861 through to March 1862), the 59th New York and the 9th and 10th Rhode Island Regiments, amongst others. Eventually the fort had a dozen heavy guns and a contingent of 3,000 men, making it the largest fort of those surrounding Washington.

Civil War Combat:

The fort saw action on July 10-12, 1864, when Robert E. Lee sent 22,000 Confederates led by General Jubal A. Early against the 9,000 Union troops defending Washington (Ulysses S. Grant had depleted the Union defenses for his siege of Petersburg). The Confederates attacked from the north in Maryland. The initial warnings came from Fort Reno lookouts spying movement by Rockville. The attack itself was directed about 4 miles to the east across Rock Creek at Fort Stevens. The battle is known as "The Battle of Fort Stevens."

Fort Reno is now maintained by the National Park Service. Following the war the fort became a "Freetown" for freed slaves and later a reservoir.

Music Venue:

Now Fort Reno is the location of an annual free summer concert series, featuring bands from the area's indie rock scene. Bands such as Fugazi, The Dismemberment Plan, Q and not U, Ted Leo, Benjy Ferree, Canyon, Travis Morrison, The Most Secret Method, Beauty Pill, and Power Pirate have played there.

On May 14, 2008 Fort Reno Park was closed due to the detection of arsenic in the soil, and a fence was erected around the park.. However on May 28 the park was reopened and the fence removed after officials found that the initial high reading of arsenic levels was mistaken.
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.) I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!
Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].