Civil War-era Fort D moves step closer to national register status

Fort D, Missouri’s only redan or V-shaped Civil War-era earthworks, is a step closer to being added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Civil War re-enactor Scott House, who has long been involved in efforts to preserve the site at 920 Fort St. on Cape Girardeau’s south side, is optimistic Fort D will receive national recognition now that the application has been approved by the Missouri Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.

State approval came last week. It will soon be sent to the National Park Service in Washington, D.C., which will make the final decision.

House, who wrote the bulk of the application, expects the site to receive the national designation within the next three months.

“It took a year of researching and writing to get that together,” he said.

House and fellow Union Army re-enactors with the Turner Brigade participated in a living history demonstration Monday at Fort D, setting up camp and firing a cannon while musicians played period music on the grounds of the city park.

While House talked of the site’s past during the Memorial Day event, he also found time to talk of its potential national recognition.

The site is significant as part of Cape Girardeau’s Civil War history. It was one of four forts built by the Union Army to protect Cape Girardeau. It is the only fort remaining in Cape Girardeau and the only surviving earthworks of all the forts that were built to protect Missouri’s major cities.

“They are all gone, except for one (Fort D),” House said.

“We have a fort that is smack dab in the city,” he said.

House said the earthworks are original, but were repaired in the 1930s through the efforts of the federal Works Progress Administration.

“They did not rebuild them,” House said, “That is a Cape Girardeau myth,” he added of reports the current earthworks are not original. “It is just not true,” he said.

Fort D also is historic because of its Depression-era, limestone-covered brick building that stands on the grounds, according to House.

But he said Fort D has national significance, too, because of its ties to John Wesley Powell, a celebrated explorer made famous by his exploration of the Colorado River after the Civil War.

Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in 1861 put Powell in charge of finishing fortifications to protect Cape Girardeau. Powell spent eight months in Cape Girardeau.

“His career doesn’t affect the State of Missouri very much, but it did affect the nation as a whole,” House said.

“He became an incredibly powerful and important person,” he said.

But without Grant’s decision to put the former Illinois schoolteacher in charge of building the four forts in Cape Girardeau, Powell would never have had his later success, according to House.

“That was his first real experience of engineering and mapping,” House said. “That was his steppingstone to fame.”

Standing on the grounds of Fort D on Monday, House said, “this place was pretty much a defining place for John Wesley Powell.”

Powell traveled extensively in the West after the war and did more than explore the Colorado River, according to House.

“People don’t even realize he was the man who studied the Indians. He wrote down their languages,” House said.

Powell, he said, was the father of American ethnology, a branch of anthropology analyzing cultures.

He also served as director of the U.S. Geological Survey.

“This is the man who became the most powerful person in the West,” House said.

There are mountains, valleys and even cities named after Powell.

House said he is “enthused’ about the latest success in the effort to place the site on the national register.

The City of Cape Girardeau has promised to improve the site as a part of a long list of projects to be funded from a parks/stormwater sales tax approved by voters last year.

The blockhouse, which dates back to the 1930s, is deteriorating. Its roof collapsed more than 13 years ago.

City officials have promised to put a roof over the structure as part of a $200,000 improvement project at the site. But it is unclear when that work would be done.

City planner Ryan Shrimplin said national register status might open the door to some federal funding.

But both House and fellow Fort D supporter and Turner Brigade member William Eddleman said the national register is more about recognition of a site’s history than a source of funding.

It’s a recognition they feel is nearly here.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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