“That the government spent money to build a cutting-edge coastal fort way out here in the wilds shows the importance of California during the Gold Rush.”
Westerners brought many things when they came to the Bay Area, technology, new religion and massive greed. Among these was paranoia – a fear of others slipping in and disrupting the nice life they were making.
The most practical solution was a fort. The Spanish, realizing the narrows were key to controlling the region, built one called Castillo de San Joaquin in 1794. It was a funny-shaped adobe structure that could rain down fire from a perch roughly 100 feet above the water. When the Americans captured California in the mid-1800s, they wanted a fort closer to water level to bounce cannonballs over the waves like deadly skipping stones.
Martini knows the fort well, having worked there in the 1970s and written two historical books about it. “The idea was to build multiple-story forts, so that cannons could be stacked one upon the other to maximize firepower,” he explains. “They didn’t have diesel-powered machinery swinging around the blocks of granite. It was all done with portable cranes and either strong backs or wheel power. The fact they were able to build the thing as fast as they did – they started in 1853, and it was almost finished in 1861, when the Civil War began – is remarkable,” says Martini.
“This Fort, as is well known, consists of a mass of granite and brick, situated at the entrance of the Golden Gate, presenting a bold front to the Ocean. And while its massive walls afford safe protection to its big guns, its interior arrangements offer but a cold and cheerless habitation to the soldier.”
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