Qualla: Fort Lyon (Virginia)

Fort Lyon (Virginia): Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mathew Benjamin Brady, Public domain. Around two o'clock on the afternoon of June 9, 1863, Anne Frobel was sitting in her house south of Alexandria when the windows rattled. A second blast followed almost immediately. She looked up toward Fort Lyon, the Union earthwork on the hill above her, just as the magazine went up. Everything flew up from the center and seemed to stand still for a moment, she wrote that night in her diary - then pieces of steel, stones, and dirt came rattling and thundering down. She compared the scene to engravings of Mount Vesuvius in eruption. Twenty-five soldiers died in the explosion. Eight tons of black powder and several thousand rounds of ammunition went with them. President Lincoln himself came down from Washington a few days later to inspect the damage. Today the hill where Fort Lyon stood is a Metro station parking lot.

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Image: Mathew Benjamin Brady | Public domain

Fort Lyon (Virginia): Crossing the River

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cliff1066, CC BY 2.0. On the night of May 23, 1861 - the same day Virginia voted three to one to leave the Union - United States Army regiments began marching across the Potomac bridges into northern Virginia. Eight thousand infantry crossed at the Long Bridge alone. The plan, which Brigadier General ...

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Image: Cliff1066 | CC BY 2.0

Fort Lyon (Virginia): Building on Ballenger's Hill

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. After the disastrous Union defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861, George McClellan took command of what would become the Army of the Potomac and ordered a great expansion of the Washington defenses. Alexandria, which held a major port and the southern terminus o...

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Image: Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided | Public domain

Fort Lyon (Virginia): The Vesuvius Comparison

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robert Knox Snedon, Public domain. Major General Samuel P. Heintzelman commanded the defenses of Washington from his headquarters at Fort Lyon between October 1862 and October 1863. On his staff was a young topographical engineer named Robert Knox Sneden, whose remarkable wartime diary and watercolors would be red...

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Image: Robert Knox Snedon | Public domain

Fort Lyon (Virginia): A Metro Station Now

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ser Amantio di Nicolao, CC BY-SA 3.0. Companies from a series of New York and Ohio regiments rotated through Fort Lyon over the course of the war. Four companies of the 1st Wisconsin Heavy Artillery took over in October 1864 and were mustered out at war's end on June 26, 1865. After Appomattox the fort was abandoned ...

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Image: Ser Amantio di Nicolao | CC BY-SA 3.0