I was waiting for a bus at the stop shown in the picture below in 1976 when I noticed a small gray marker across the street. The apartment complex that was behind me at the time was torn down in 2002 and a series of town homes were built on the site, the front row of which you see in the picture below.

One day when I arrived at the stop early, I crossed the street, then called Lee Highway now called Langston Boulevard, to view what the marker said. Forty-eight years later I would return to take the photograph below.

The fort was constructed in August of 1861 by a unit of Massachusetts volunteers and originally called Fort DeKalb for the famous Revolutionary War General Baron Johann DeKalb, who was killed in the Battle of Camden on August 16, 1780. He was originally buried on the site of the marker below in Camden, South Carolina.

The fort was renamed Fort Strong on November 4, 1863, after Major General George Crockett Strong who died on July 30, 1863, from an infected wound (tetanus) that he sustained during the Battle of Fort Wagner on Morris Island (the subject of the movie Glory).

The fort was on the northern end of the Arlington Line until Fort C. F. Smith was built (see the map below from a publication by the Arlington Historical Society- link in the references).

Fort Strong was a lunette with a perimeter of 318 yards and mounted 15 guns (seven 24-pounders, four 30-pound Parrott Rifles, two 10-inch siege mortals, one 6-pound field gun and one 24-pound brass field howitzer). A bombproof was constructed sometime in 1863 or 1864. It had its own regimental hospital. President Lincoln toured the fort on August 5, 1863. Fort Strong was garrisoned by several different artillery units over time including the 1st MA, 2nd NY, and parts of the Maine Light Artillery. Infantry units stationed there included parts of the 16th ME, 145th Ohio National Guard, and the 3rd US Infantry. It was garrisoned until March of 1869 when it was abandoned.

A home initially known as Ruthcomb and subsequently Altha Hall was built on the site after the war and at one point some remains were located on its grounds (on a modern map it would have been at 2013 North Adams Street). Two photographs of it are shown below. The earthworks are long since gone when a group of real estate investors bought the property, demolished the home in 1959 and built an apartment complex there, Potomac Towers.

Another home in the area was known as Fort Strong Villa (shown below). It was set back off the then Lee Highway which would today be at 2627 Langston Boulevard (set back off the intersection of Langston Boulevard and North Calvert Street). The house was built in 1888 by John Walter Clark who first paved then Lee Highway. It is thought that outlying earthworks from the fort extended through the property.

A satellite map from Google maps of the area of the fort and the marker is shown below. The fort, on the same side of Langston Boulevard as the marker, was between Veitch and North Adams Street. Interstate 66 did not exist in Arlington when I first saw the marker, it would open there in 1982. LiDAR maps verify that there are no remains of the fort or outlying earthworks.

Sources

Fort Strong on Arlington Heights by Anne C. Web Arlington Historical Society Magazine Volume 5, No. 1, October 1973.

Civil War Forts in Arlington by C.B. Rose Jr. Arlington Historical Society Magazine Volume 1 No. 4 October 1960.

Mr. Lincoln’s Forts A Guide to the Civil War Defenses of Washington by Benjamin Franklin Cooling, III and Walton H. Owen, II.

Arlington Heritage by Eleanor Lee Templemen