Feature Article Fortifying Fort Pike Lieca N. Brown -
[email protected] Posted: 01/01/2005 An ambitious monitoring and restoration effort at one of Louisiana’s oldest sites calls for creative supplies. In response to attacks on our nation’s capital and New Orleans, President James Monroe ordered the placement of an extensive coastal defense system following the War of 1812. The seacoast fortifications protected ports along New Orleans and rivers such as the Mississippi. Six new masonry forts were built in coastal Louisiana at that time; Fort Pike was one. Completed in 1826, Fort Pike, which was named after General Zebulon Montgomery Pike, an explorer and soldier, was designed to withstand attack from land or sea. Along with its vital military purpose, the fort was also an impressive architectural structure. Featuring a unique casemate design including narrow exit tunnels, the pie-shaped facility overlooks the Rigolets, a narrow passage between Lake Ponchartrain and the Gulf of Mexico, and houses two pointed bastions (fortified areas) that face the land. The fort originally featured two protective moats around the main structure and a glacis (an embankment designed to expose attackers to defending gunfire) and a covered way between the moats. The fort’s extended functions were varied. It provided housing for many officers and troops along with their service buildings such as bakeries, and merchandise and clothing stores. It also functioned as a staging area for troops en route to Florida, and provided a holding site for prisoners and slaves being transported to Oklahoma in the 1830s. In the 1840s, Fort Pike was a stopover for soldiers bound for Texas and Mexico.