Fort Worden Blog

Following World War I, Fort Worden, like the rest of the nation’s military installations, experienced a rapid and extensive draw down of troops. By 1926, the fort was officially placed in caretaker status with fewer than 400 officers and enlisted personnel stationed on site. The big guns that were brought down from Artillery Hill when the United States entered the war in 1918, and shipped to the Front did not return. Although there were still some operational disappearing gun batteries and mortar parks remaining on Artillery Hill, the mission of the fort had changed. Advancements in aviation and naval warship ordnance technology made the country’s late-19^th century coastal fortifications obsolete. It was clear to the Army that the defense of Puget Sound’s harbors, cities, and shipyards was not going to be well served by cannons alone. In 1920, the Army, in its search for a more modern role for Fort Worden, assigned the 24^th Battery Balloon Company to the post and began building a balloon hangar. The high winds proved too difficult to launch and retrieve the observation balloon, so the 24^th Company was reassigned, but since the hangar was already under construction, the project continued, although the building was never used to house an observation balloon.

There was a glimmer of hope for new life at the fort when visiting officer, Lieutenant Arthur Easterbrook, son of Army Chaplain Colonel Edmund Easterbrook (see April, 2018 article), announced the possibility of new arrivals. According to the January 8, 1920 Leader edition, Easterbrook heard that…” the 91^st Aerial Squadron, composed of 24 sea and land planes plus 300 officers and mechanics would be assigned duty on Puget Sound this summer.” The planes and crews never arrived and a few weeks later the fort’s regiment was stunned by the news that fourteen of its sergeants received orders to report to Camp Lewis in Tacoma to serve as instructors. Losing such a significant number of NCO’s (non-commissioned officers), considered the heart and soul of the regiment further enhanced the rumors that the fort had no future.

Later that same month, in an effort to boost morale, Army chief of staff, and revered leader of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) General John Pershing, made a quick up sound trip from Seattle to inspect Fort Worden’s remaining troops. The general, along with an entourage of 70 officers and staff, arrived at the fort dock aboard the steamer “Kitsap II,” and motorcaded up the hill to the Parade Ground to review a provisional battalion of troops made up from the three forts Worden, Flagler, and Casey. The community was invited to attend but were required to congregate on the embankment in front of the houses on Officers Row. The Leader reported, when the General noticed the children encroaching onto the lawn and O Row Street (now named Pershing Avenue) to get a better look, “…the general waved his hand, graciously inviting the youngsters to cross the sacred ground provided by military regulations.” Following a quick lunch at the Officers Mess, the General of the Armies returned down sound on the 3pm sailing.

The decade following World War I, left Fort Worden, as one visitor observed, “devoid of spectacular features.” Today, managed by the Fort Worden Public Development Authority in cooperation with the park’s sixteen partners, Fort Worden is a thriving recreational and educational conference center offering a myriad of “spectacular features” in housing, camping, meals, and entertainment.

Soldiers and their families stationed at Fort Worden during the Great Depression of the 1930’s fared better than many. The economic collapse that left 15 million Americans out of work impacted the military as well. Like many of the military installations in the country, Fort Worden was reduced to caretaker status. For soldiers still on active duty, the daily routine was a mix of Army ritual including close order drill, marching, and hours of “chalk board” gunnery training. Active firing of the guns for target practice was expensive and therefore infrequently scheduled. Like civilian families, it was necessary for Army families to find ways to supplement their income and make do with what was on hand.

What Fort Worden had on hand was flat land with good soil. Mrs. Marguerite McIlroy Douglas, the daughter of Warrant Officer Fred W. McIlroy, recalled the family garden they kept when they were stationed at the fort. In 1934, her father was assigned as Quartermaster and moved into a duplex on NCO (Noncommissioned Officer) Row. In her interview, she states, ‘…all the families had gardens. When you left the house, you would go to the gardens up by the mule stables. My dad had a wonderful garden…I’m sure it was an economical thing…in the basement, there was a large area lined with shelves and my mother canned everything imaginable. She also sold the fish that she and dad would catch. They would get up at two in the morning and go down and put their little boat in the water and fish for a couple of hours.” Interestingly, her father would return to Fort Worden nearly twenty years later as a Lieutenant Colonel, and serve as the post’s last Commanding Officer with its closure in 1953.

The fort’s land also had recreational purposes. For a brief time, the parade ground served as the post’s golf course. Several Leader articles from the 1930’s give front page, above the fold, coverage to golf tournaments between the city and fort golf teams. The March 20, 1930, Leader edition reported the post’s recreation officer, Lieutenant Reuter, was inviting all municipal players to come and acquaint themselves with the course. The lieutenant boasted, “The sand greens are better than ever before…new tees have been built and the course is in fine shape for the match.” The exact whereabouts of the course is still being researched. According to 95 year old local resident Jack Caldwell, who spent his boyhood summers playing with the NCO Row kids at the fort, there were three oil and sand greens used for putting surfaces and six tees to make up the 18-hole course. He recalls one green located by the baseball backstop at the northeast corner of the parade ground, another at the southeast corner across the street from the Commanding Officer’s house, and the third where the Rhododendron garden is today. With the parade ground 400 yards in length and 160 yards wide, the layout was likely considered a pitch and putt course.

Although the course is gone, fort land for recreational purposes remains. In addition to the parade ground ballfields and tennis courts, the dedicated lawn games area along NCO Row offers croquet, bocce ball, horseshoes, and crowd gathering petanque tournaments. No longer in caretaker status, today Fort Worden offers year round recreational and educational opportunities for all.

On a sunny Tuesday morning 80 years ago on the 30^th of May, troops from Battery G, and the fort’s regimental band mustered in front of the Fort Worden movie theater in preparation for the annual Memorial Day service. The detail, comprising nearly 200 soldiers, stepped off precisely at 11:25am and marched west down the road (now named Eisenhower Avenue) toward the post cemetery. Tucked away in the southwest corner of the fort, encompassing a little over an acre, the hallowed ground initially served as the final resting place for veterans of the Civil War and Spanish American War. According to the June 1, 1939 Leader, Captain Louis T. Vickers, of the 14^th Coast Artillery, and Chaplain F. B. Bonner, lead the solemn ceremony with speeches and prayer concluding with the national salute of 21 guns in remembrance of the fallen. In the early days of the fort, the memorial services were for the garrison alone. Later, locals were invited onto the post to take part in the annual remembrance ceremony.

Officially, Memorial Day is only a 50 year old Federal holiday, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in 1968. Traditionally, the day of remembrance began a hundred years earlier when Civil War General John Logan used his influence as the head of the newly established Civil War Union veterans’ national organization, the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), to honor those lost during the war. Logan issued an order to the membership that May 30, 1868, as the day “for strewing with flowers the graves of comrades who died in the defense of their country…and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.”

The public response was overwhelming but many of the burial sites were rudimentary plots situated on the former battlefields scattered throughout the South. Following the Civil War, the government had the difficult task of reinterring the remains of over 300,000 soldiers from the shallow battlefield graves to newly created formal military cemeteries on Army posts throughout the country. Fort Worden’s was established in June, 1902, and when the fort was decommissioned in 1953, the cemetery remained under the purview of the Army.

Today, managed by Tacoma’s Army and Air Force Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM), the cemetery is one of the few located outside a military installation, meaning a gate access request is not required to visit the grave sites. Currently, the cemetery holds the graves of 442 military personnel, and civilians, as well as two unknown veterans. The cemetery remains open for inurnments only.

Since its designation as a Federal holiday, Memorial Day is now observed on the last Monday in May, this year it’s May 27^th. Although the soldiers are gone, the American Legion Marvin Shields Memorial Post #26, continues the annual tradition of paying homage to those veterans who have passed on. The Legion has organized a wreath laying ceremony for the all local cemeteries starting with Fort Worden at 10am. The public is invited to join the procession and is welcome to meet at the Reveille Café in the Commons prior to the 10am observances.

Eighty years ago, weddings in Port Townsend had to come to grips with new Army regulations. Fort Worden had come out of its twenty year slumber that followed WWI, and the post was returning to life. Anti-aircraft guns were replacing the big guns on Artillery Hill and new recruits, both regular Army and National Guard, were filling the new barracks and houses as fast as they could be built.

In 1939, Port Townsend’s population was just under 4,700 citizens. By the time the United States entered WWII in December, 1941, the ranks of Fort Worden had greatly expanded and would reach over 4,000 officers and troops before war’s end.

The young soldiers came from all over the nation to live and train in one of the most beautiful parts of the country. However, it didn’t take them long to realize that due to the large ratio of men to women it was going to be challenging to meet and, hopefully, court a local woman.

Washington State, in an attempt to dampen soldier and civilian ardor, quickly passed a law requiring all marriage license applicants to wait three days before issuance of the license. Known as the “gin marriage” law, the Leader cracked wise about the new regulation. In its July 6, 1939, edition the paper poked fun at justices of the peace, Messrs. Vose and Meeker. When interviewed, both complained of the loss of revenue they were enduring because the wait period took away the opportunity of performing an on-the-spot marriage ceremony. “Gosh it’s tough,” complained Justice Meeker. “….I’ve been paid as high as $5 for performing a nice little marriage – but that’s all gone now.”

Fort Worden echoed the Leader’s news and sentiment. The Fort’s scribe, J.W. Hulbert, submitted an article to the Leader announcing, per War Department regulations, “….Dan Cupid is going to have tougher sledding…a general tightening up of policy which tends to discourage the marriage of enlisted personnel in the lower ranks.” He gamely attempts to justify the logic of the action by noting; “…it is expected that the efficiency of the Army will be martially benefitted eventually by this change in policy.”

It would be difficult to measure what affects, if any, the marriage boom had on the military’s prowess during the war, but there’s no question the marriages of that time continue to have a significant impact on our community today. The Leader recorded forty-three marriage licenses issued in 1939. The applicants are a “who’s who” of Port Townsend, with family names like Arey, Minish, Kjellin, and Younce, still familiar in town today.

Although soldiers no longer queue at the courthouse seeking marriage license applications, Fort Worden has become the premier location for weddings and special occasion events on the Olympic Peninsula. The fort currently hosts over twenty weddings a year, including an intimate experience aptly named, “Elopements at the Fort!”

Fort Worden’s balloon hanger began as a boondoggle and wound up a windfall. Following World War I, it was evident to Army brass that Puget Sound’s “Triangle of Fire,” was no longer the imposing technological marvel it was touted to be. During the Great War, the development of balloons and aircraft greatly diminished the role of artillery as a seacoast defensive strategy.

In his fine art photography volume, “Fort Worden: Rebirth through Decay,” photographer and author Peter St. George records the arrival of the 24^th Balloon Company on May 11, 1920. He notes the troops, ‘….carried out test flights and parachute jumps from 7,000 feet and took on missions measuring atmospheric conditions and photographing surrounding forts for terrain analysis.” Tests results were encouraging. Additional balloon companies were assigned to the fort and a balloon hanger was completed a year later.

Evidently no one bothered to stick a wet finger in the air and test for wind. Soon after the completion of the hanger, it was discovered “that wind conditions were not conducive to balloon flight.” In the 98 years since its construction, the hanger has housed Rhododendron Festival floats, and served as the fort’s search light maintenance center, a playground for the soldiers’ kids, and a stage set for the motion picture “An Officer and a Gentleman.” It was even shot at.

In an interview, Mr. Lee Metcalf, who served in the 248^th Coast Artillery at Fort Worden in 1939 and 1940, described how walking guard post could sometimes be both hazardous and embarrassing. Changing of the guard took place at the Guard House (now Taps at the Guardhouse) across the street from the balloon hanger. Mr. Metcalf recounted that during the change, “…those who had .45 caliber pistols would stand on the front porch, point them toward the hanger and unload. Apparently a lot of them didn’t know how to unload properly and they would squeeze one off, and it would bang off the hanger. It was a big laugh and there were a lot of dings in that building.”

By World War II, the hanger’s most popular purpose was to serve as a music hall for the big dance bands that epitomized the 1940’s. In addition to the fort’s own, and very popular 248^th Coast Artillery Band, many of the nationally known big name bands performed in the hanger.

A pinnacle performance took place in the summer of ‘41, when Ray Noble and his band came to the fort. The August 14, 1941, Leader reported, “The greatest name band ever to visit Port Townsend thrilled 1,500 soldiers and a large crowd of civilians.” Over 2,000 people filled the old hanger to enjoy Noble’s hit songs including, “The Very Thought of You,” and Good Night Sweetheart.”

The balloon hanger that never was continues to host great entertainers. Now known as McCurdy Pavilion and Littlefield Green, the performance venue is Centrum’s home for many of its annual music events, and coming soon Seattle Theater Group’s summer extravaganza “THING!”

In January 1918, America had been at war for nine months (Congress declared war on Germany April 6, 1917). At the start of the new year Fort Worden was in the midst of a dramatic transformation from a bastion of defense for Puget Sound to an embarkation point for young recruits on their way to Europe. Because of frigid temperatures in the east, thousands of men were sent west to receive training. They also came west to cut timber. The Leader’s January 2nd edition announced “Signal Corps men arrive. Form the vanguard of force placed in logging camps of the peninsula.” The airplane industry’s demand for spruce required troops to assist private logging concerns in harvesting the wood.

Timber was also needed for the construction trades. All the forts in the area were experiencing building booms. Fort Worden alone had more than 75 buildings constructed during the first year of the war. Captain Henry J. Neumann, C.A.C., noted in his daily journal that his company was ordered from its barracks (Building 203) and into camp on Artillery Hill (near present day building #409) to make room for the influx of new recruits. Troops arriving from the east were countered somewhat by the transfer of veteran soldiers stationed at Fort Worden to new assignments. The Leader dedicated a section of the paper to the comings and goings of the county’s native sons and daughters. Reviewing the Leader’s early 1918 editions revealed two names of note. The first one was my grandfather. The Leader’s January 3rd edition (it was a daily back then) with the headline, “Local Man Promoted,” reported that John Caldwell, formally a sergeant, was made a lieutenant and ordered to Maryland, leaving behind his pregnant wife Caroline (Sofie) Caldwell. The second referred to the current namesake of Fort Worden’s balloon hanger. The February 21st edition reported that Horace W. McCurdy, son of Mr. and Mrs. James McCurdy, was home on leave from the Navy for a short visit before heading to a ship in the Atlantic Fleet. In addition to the travels of locals, the Leader also kept tabs on the weekend wonderings of the recruits.

When the recruits were given weekend liberty, many of the young men headed downtown to catch a ship heading up sound. The steamers Sol Duc and Kulshan often ran close to capacity on Saturday night carrying artillerymen out of town for the big cities of Seattle and Tacoma. The Leader reported that on the Sunday 3am return trip down sound, the steamers’ decks would be covered with recruits catching a short nap before trudging back to the fort in time for reveille.

A century ago, thousands of young men were passing through Fort Worden on their way to war. The need to train, house, and victual the troops changed the role of the fort from an armed fortress to a learning center for soldiering. The change would be permanent. The big guns would never return and the fort would grow again to train the next generation of recruits for the next war.