Fort McAllister: Savannah's Last Stand in the Civil War

Fort McAllister, home of an earthenwork fortification from the Civil War, is located about 30 miles from downtown Savannah and the Historic District. The fort can be reached via Interstate 95 south of the city. Other historic attractions in the area, besides the city itself, include the Wormsloe State Historic Site, Old Fort Jackson, and Fort Pulaski. Although the land where Fort McAllister sits today was occupied possibly as long as 5000 years ago and much archaeological work has been done there on the Native American inhabitants, it is remembered today for the role it played in the Civil War.

At the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, the site's owner, Joseph L. McAllister, raised a company of troops to go fight in Virginia. Because of its strategic location to the south of Savannah at the mouth of the Ogeechee River, McAllister agreed to let a fort be constructed on his land. Significantly, the fort was not made of brick or masonry, but earthenwork. Jeffrey Mosser, writing in America's Civil War, describes the construction of the fort: "Huge amounts of earth were piled into wooden frames to form the battery walls, or traverses. After the earth settled, the frames were removed, and grass was planted on the mounds and walls to prevent erosion.'' Fort Pulaski, just up the coast, was a massive masonry structure, but it fell to Union bombardment in only 36 hours. Fort McAllister withstood repeated bombardment until 1864. When hit by shells, the soldiers would simply stuff mud into the holes and fight on. As the last remaining Confederate fort in the area, General Sherman knew he had to take McAllister before he could claim Savannah. He decided to attack it from the land side, and within 15 minutes, the fort was in Union hands.

After the Civil War, the fort was abandoned except for a brief time in the 1920s and `30s when Henry Ford (yes, Henry Ford) took an interest in the site. In the early 1960s, the land was given to the State of Georgia, and today, Fort McAllister is a state park. The park has camping facilities with full hook-ups near the edge of the marsh, as well as one pioneer campsite out in the marsh. Three fully equipped cabins are available for rental that face out onto the marsh. A museum features artifacts from the Civil War, including items recovered from the Nashville, a Confederate ship that became trapped upriver by the Union blockade and was eventually sunk by an iron-clad ship. There is also a nature trail that interprets marsh ecology, plus three miles of other hiking and biking trails. The park also stages events throughout the year that re-enact historic events and present living history exhibits of life before and during the Civil War in Georgia.

Internet reviews of Fort McAllister are very positive. The campground is singled out as having superb facilities. One reviewer calls it "one of my favorite campgrounds on the East Coast.'' Another person praises the "peace and quiet'' of the park. The fort itself is sometimes overlooked by campers, but those who go for the history were impressed. One visitor said, "The fort was very interesting and informative and the museum was nice and clean.'' A young woman claiming not to like anything "war-related'' exclaimed, "I'd never heard of this kind of fort, and it has been preserved so well that you could really imagine yourself there during the Civil War. Worth an afternoon!''