The guns of Fort Stevens (photo diary)

Fort Stevens began in 1863 as a Civil War fortification guarding the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon. The Fort Stevens Historic Area of the Fort Stevens State Park has examples of some of the guns used at the fort. The last battery to be emplaced, Battery 245 featured the modern “200 series” of gun batteries that used radar to improve accuracy in foul weather and fog. These new guns could fire 9 to 15 miles away. The Rodman Gun, designed by Thomas Jackson Rodman (1815-1871) for the Union...