Fort Popham

I love obscure things. The more obscure, the more I like it. That's why I spend so much time on the battlefield looking for little details. It's an illness....one that I really don't want to cure. I was messing around on the Internet the other day and came across a fort that was built during the Civil War in Maine. It's name is Fort Popham. I'm not sure how I even found this, but there it was and now I need to share the information that I found out about it.

The Colony of Popham was settled in 1607 when George Popham (the colony leader) and about 120 people on the ship "Gift of God" landed in in the area. This was an offshoot of the Plymouth (MA) colony.

Here is what I found on its Civil War history (from Wikipedia - no one else seems to have any info on it at all...except that it was a Civil War site):
Construction of Fort Popham was authorized in 1857, but did not begin until 1861. The fort was built from granite blocks quarried on nearby Fox Island and Dix Island. It had a 30-foot (9 m) - high wall facing the mouth of the Kennebec River and was built in a crescent shape, measuring approximately 500 feet (150 m) in circumference.
Fort Popham's armament consisted of 36 cannons arranged in two tiers of vaulted casements. The back side of Fort Popham was built with a low moated curtain containing a central gate and 20 musket ports.
In 1869 construction at Fort Popham stopped before the fortification was completed. The fort was garrisoned again after additional work was performed during the Spanish-American War and World War I.

What this site doesn't tell us is why the fort was built. One thing that I was able to gleen from looking at about 20 websites was that evidently there was a threat of the Confederates attacking from the north (St. Alban's, VT is a prime example) and this fort was in place just in case such a thing would happen. With the majority of the war being fought below the Mason-Dixon line, who would think to fortify the far northern sections of the North? The United States did.

Although nothing actually took place at Fort Popham, just knowing that the eastern seaboard was fortified up and down the coast, must have been something that the locals would have felt as being comforting. The war never made it to Maine, but at least Maine was ready.