Qualla: Fort Caswell Historic District

Fort Caswell Historic District: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Doc Searls from Santa Barbara, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0. On January 17, 1865, the Confederate garrison at Fort Caswell touched off about 100,000 pounds of powder rather than let it fall to the Union. The blast destroyed an entire wall of the fort. People in Fayetteville, a hundred miles inland, said they heard it. The loss of Fort Caswell and nearby Fort Fisher closed the last working Confederate port at Wilmington, and historians later credited that closure as one of the pressures that pushed Robert E. Lee toward surrender at Appomattox. The brick walls survived the explosion. So did the earthworks. Today, both stand inside a Baptist retreat center on the eastern tip of Oak Island.

Image: Doc Searls from Santa Barbara, USA | CC BY-SA 2.0

Fort Caswell Historic District: Named for a Governor, Built for a River

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nebotheplacebo124, CC BY-SA 4.0. Richard Caswell was North Carolina's first state governor under the new constitution, and the fort named for him was completed in 1836 at a cost of $473,402. The design was pentagonal, with brick walls and large earthworks. It mounted more than 61 gun emplacements, all aimed at t...

Image: Nebotheplacebo124 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Fort Caswell Historic District: The Minutemen and the Civil War

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nebotheplacebo124, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1861, before North Carolina formally seceded, a group calling itself the Cape Fear Minutemen seized Fort Caswell twice. Both times Governor John Willis Ellis ordered them to return it to the lone U.S. Army caretaker stationed there. When the state finally seceded, the Confeder...

Image: Nebotheplacebo124 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Fort Caswell Historic District: The Magazine Blast

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The original uploader was Link5001 at English Wikipedia., CC BY-SA 2.5. Fort Fisher fell on January 15, 1865, after a massive Union assault. Two days later, with the position no longer defensible, the Confederate garrison at Fort Caswell received orders to spike the guns, burn the barracks, and explode the magazines. They did. The roughly 100,000 pou...

Image: The original uploader was Link5001 at English Wikipedia. | CC BY-SA 2.5

Fort Caswell Historic District: Resort, Submarine Hunt, Retreat

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. The fort was abandoned after World War I. From 1937 to 1941, someone tried to convert it into a resort. The gun emplacements became swimming pools, fed by two artesian wells producing hot mineral water. It did not work commercially. The Navy purchased the property in 1941 and use...

Image: Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided | Public domain

Fort Caswell Historic District: Forty-Three Buildings, Twenty-Three Structures

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Upstateherd, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Fort Caswell Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2013. The listing covers two sites, 43 buildings, and 23 structures, including the original brick walls, the earthworks, and a separate rifle range two miles west in Caswell Beach. The dis...

Image: Upstateherd | CC BY-SA 4.0