Battery East

Battery East stands as a survivor of a brief but pivotal era in military engineering. Following the American Civil War, the United States Army realized that traditional masonry fortresses like the nearby Fort Point were vulnerable to new, high-powered rifled artillery. In the eighteen seventies, the military shifted its strategy, replacing stone walls with low-profile, grass-covered earthen mounds that were far more difficult for enemy ships to target and destroy. You can still see these distinctive mounds and the original brick-lined ammunition magazines that once protected the massive fifteen-inch Rodman cannons stationed here.