Fort Runyon

Drawing of Fort Runyon More details "Section of Fort Runyon, Va., guarding the road to Alexandria, occupied by the Twenty-first Regiment, New York Volunteers, August 1861. For Runyon, named after the commander of the New Jersey Regiments which were formerly stationed there, entirely commanded the road to Alexandria. Our sketch shows the battery erected on this important point. The spot was a most picturesque one, commanding a splendid view all around, the background being the Potomac and Washington." Source: Frank Leslie, Famous Leaders and Battle Scenes of the Civil War Creator: Frank Leslie

Fort Runyon was the largest fort in the ring of defenses that protected Washington during the Civil War.

Fort Runyon was built immediately after the entry of Union forces into Virginia on May 24, 1861. It was the largest fort in the ring of defenses that protected Washington during the Civil War. It was named after Brigadier General Theodore Runyon, commander of the Fourth Division of the Army of Northeastern Virginia, during the First Battle of Bull Run.

Over 13,000 men marched into northern Virginia on May 24th, bringing with them "a long train of wagons filled with wheelbarrows and shovels," These implements were put to work even as thousands of men marched further into Virginia. Engineer officers under the command of then-Colonel John G. Barnard accompanied the army. They began building fortifications and entrenchments along the banks of the Potomac River to defend the bridges that crossed it. By sunrise on the morning of May 24th, the ground had already been broken on the first two forts comprising the Civil War defenses of Washington — Fort Runyon and Fort Corcoran.

At the time of the occupation of northern Virginia, Runyon commanded a brigade of four New Jersey regiments: the First, Second, Third, and Fourth New Jersey Volunteer Infantry. Men from these regiments supplied the labor to construct Fort Runyon while engineers under Colonel Barnard directed the work. Also participating in the construction effort were men from the 7th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment, temporarily attached to the New Jersey Brigade.

The land for the fort was appropriated from James Roach, a building contractor in Washington who was the second-largest landowner in the county, behind only the Lee family. Soldiers tore up land, dug trenches, and used gardens for latrines. Roach's mansion on Prospect Hill was vandalized by Union forces during the construction of Fort Runyon but survived the war and was demolished in 1965. Other land for Fort Runyon and Fort Jackson came from the demolition of Jackson City, a collection of gambling establishments, saloons, and a racetrack located at the Long Bridge's southern end.

Due to the importance of the Long Bridge, which linked northern Virginia directly with downtown Washington, Fort Runyon was designed to be the largest fort in the entire system of defenses protecting Washington. 1,484 yards of the perimeter were protected by 21 guns of various types and manned by over 300 artillerymen. Over 1,700 more men manned the fort's walls, making the total garrison in October 1861 just over 2,000 men. The fort was arranged in a rough pentagon shape, with one wall facing the Alexandria Turnpike, another facing the Columbia Turnpike, and the other three facing Washington and the Potomac River, which lay just to the north and east sides of the fort. Large gates were built into the two southernmost walls to provide passage for wagons and passengers traveling along the two turnpikes linked to the Long Bridge. Fort Runyon was built directly at the crossroads of the two turnpikes and served as a checkpoint for vehicles entering the city via the Long Bridge.

After General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia surrendered on April 9, 1865, the primary reason for manned defenses protecting Washington ceased to exist. Initial recommendations by Colonel Barton S. Alexander, then-chief engineer of the Washington defenses, were to divide the defenses into three classes: those that should be kept active (first-class), those that should be mothballed and kept in a reserve state (second-class), and those that should be abandoned entirely (third-class). Due to its rear-area nature and the fact that the fort was unimportant to the overall defenses of Washington, Fort Runyon fell into the third-class category.

With the two remaining guns removed to Fort Corcoran for storage and the garrison sent home, the fort was left abandoned. Due to its proximity to Washington and the large influx of freed blacks to the city that followed the end of the Civil War, the fort became the residence of many settlers, most of whom were African-American.

Though the wood and timber that made up the fort were undoubtedly burned by squatters or scavenged for building materials in the first few years after the war, the fort's embankments and trenches lasted quite a bit longer.

A 1901 Rand McNally tour guide of Washington instructs tourists to look out of their train's windows at the Long Bridge's south end to catch a glimpse of the decaying fort. "At its further end, there still stands, plainly seen at the left of the track as soon as the first high ground is reached, Fort Runyon, a strong earthwork erected in 1861 to guard the head of the bridge against raiders." A brickworks was also located nearby, sometimes utilizing the clay that formed the bastions of Fort Runyon as raw material for the bricks that would later go into the walls of Washington homes.