Fort Pulaski National Monument

After the War of 1812 exposed how vulnerable American ports were, the United States launched a vast program to ring its coast with powerful masonry forts. Fort Pulaski, built between 1829 and 1847 on Cockspur Island at the mouth of the Savannah River, was one of the most ambitious, meant to make the river impossible for an enemy fleet to force. Building it on soft marsh ground was itself a feat of engineering, and it took some twenty-five million bricks to raise its enormous walls.

The fort was named for Casimir Pulaski, the Polish-born cavalry officer who fought and died for American independence outside Savannah. By the eve of the Civil War it stood as a symbol of solid, permanent strength, and when Georgia seceded, Confederate forces took the fort and garrisoned it, confident that its thick walls could shrug off anything the Union could throw at them from beyond the range of ordinary smoothbore guns.

The Confederates had good reason for confidence, based on the artillery everyone knew. But the Union commander, Quincy Gillmore, brought something new: rifled cannon, whose spiraled barrels fired elongated shells with far greater range, accuracy, and penetrating power than the round shot of old smoothbore guns. He mounted his batteries on Tybee Island, more than a mile away, farther than the defenders believed any gun could do real harm.

The bombardment opened on April 10, 1862. Hour after hour, the rifled shells chewed into the southeast corner of the fort with an accuracy no one had seen before, boring through the brick and threatening the powder magazine within. By the next day a breach had opened wide enough that the fort's fall was only a matter of time, and Colonel Charles Olmstead surrendered to spare his men. The whole thing had taken about thirty hours. In that short span, the rifled cannon proved that no wall of brick, however thick, could stand against it, and coastal forts the world over were suddenly obsolete.

Today you approach Fort Pulaski across the marsh, cross the moat by drawbridge, and step into a fort that is remarkably whole, its parade ground, casemates, gun rooms, and quarters all there to explore. The great draw is the breached wall itself, where you can still see the damage the rifled guns did, and read on the spot how a single new technology rewrote the rules of war. Climb to the ramparts for wide views over the river, the marsh, and out toward the sea.

The site is more than the fort. Short trails lead through the marsh and maritime woods rich with birds and lowcountry life, and from the island you can see the small, storm-battered Cockspur Island Lighthouse standing out in the channel. Because it sits right on the road between Savannah and Tybee Island, it slots perfectly into a coastal day, an hour or two of powerful history on the way to or from the beach. It was proclaimed a national monument in 1924 and remains one of the best-preserved forts of its kind in the country.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.