Qualla: Fort Caswell Rifle Range

Fort Caswell Rifle Range: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Norma Eckard, CC BY 4.0. Carved into the south wall of a concrete trench in the middle section of a suburban housing development on Oak Island, North Carolina, someone inscribed a date: May 20th, 1918. The trench is mostly buried below grade, its eastern end roofed at construction but open now to the sky, with walls eight inches to a foot thick stretching 184 feet end-to-end through what is otherwise an unremarkable maritime forest. When the inscription was made, the soldiers training here were preparing to ship out to a war that had been grinding through its fourth year. France was six months away from armistice. Most of these soldiers would not be at the front long enough to see anything decisive happen. Some of them would not come back at all.

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Image: Norma Eckard | CC BY 4.0

Fort Caswell Rifle Range: The War Department Order

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Helen Radcliffe, CC BY-SA 4.0. The United States War Department approved construction of the Fort Caswell Rifle Range on January 21, 1918, nine months after America had entered the First World War and seventeen days after President Wilson had laid out his Fourteen Points to a joint session of Congress. The ord...

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Image: Helen Radcliffe | CC BY-SA 4.0

Fort Caswell Rifle Range: How It Was Built

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Norma Eckard, CC BY 4.0. The rifle range is unusual as preserved military structures go. It is essentially a long below-grade trench, divided into three sections by interior walls and doorways. The eastern end, 14 feet long, originally had a roof and served as a storage room for targets and tools - paper...

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Image: Norma Eckard | CC BY 4.0

Fort Caswell Rifle Range: Sold for Surplus, Reclaimed by Roots

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Norma Eckard, CC BY 4.0. After the Second World War, the War Department declared Fort Caswell - including the rifle range - surplus. Most of the main fort was sold to the North Carolina Baptist Assembly in 1949 and became a Christian retreat and conference center. The rifle range, two miles inland from t...

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Image: Norma Eckard | CC BY 4.0

Fort Caswell Rifle Range: Centennial and the Brunswick County List

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Francisbausch, CC BY-SA 4.0. On April 5, 2018, the U.S. World War I Centennial Commission and the Pritzker Military Museum and Library announced that the Fort Caswell Rifle Range had been chosen as one of 100 WWI memorials nationwide selected for a restoration grant. The designation - WWI Centennial Memorial...

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Image: Francisbausch | CC BY-SA 4.0