Fort Walker’s Cultural Resources Management team has a notable history of protecting historic cultural resources -- a practice that has set the tone for ongoing work at the installation seeking to preserve multiple cultural significant historical sites and maintain community connections.
Fort Walker, located between Washington D.C. and Richmond, Virginia, was recognized in 2011 with a National Trust/Advisory Council on Historic Preservation Award for Federal Partnerships in Historic Preservation. The work that drew the national acclaim centered on protecting and preserving Camden Farm, a historic American Indian town.
Building on that model of success, the installation now works to preserve and protect multiple sites and unique assets, including several 17th Century Indian towns recorded by John Smith in 1608 and multiple sites dating to the Antebellum, Civil War, Reconstruction and later periods. The Fort Walker site was used for quartering troops by Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson during the Civil War. In 1865, John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, was captured on what is now part of Fort Walker.
In all, more than 600 archeological sites have been identified on the installation, as of July 2023. Working with the Virginia State Historic Preservation Office, CRM staff have determined 10 sites are eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places and 142 sites have been determined to be potentially eligible for inclusion. Another 248 sites were deemed not eligible.
Some of the more notable historic sites on the installation include:
- Liberty Church, built in 1850, is a one-story brick Greek revival church that was in continuous use as a Baptist church until Army acquisition, and then became a Post Chapel in the 1940s. It is now used for interdenominational services and special events.
- Travis Lake Historic District is a 150-acre recreational site that is centered around a 19th century sawmill pond. Travis Lake Lodge (ca. 1938) includes a one-story, rustic-style log building that was built by a Washington, D.C., patent lawyer as a fishing retreat. The lodge was used as an officers’ club and quarters during World War II. Currently the lodge and associated buildings are used by the installation’s Directorate of Family, Morale, Welfare, and Recreation to provide recreational lodging and for special events such as Wounded Warrior Hunts.
- Baylortown was established by Washington Baylor, a former slave who had lived in the area prior to emancipation. Baylor purchased the multiple parcels that make up Baylortown between 1876 and 1889. The site includes the remains of the Baylortown School. The school was sponsored by Washington Baylor in 1914 using a Rosenwald-style school plan. Typical Rosenwald schools were built through a cost-share fund created by Julius Rosenwald. The Baylortown School, on the other hand, used a Rosenwald building plan, but was fully funded by the local community.
The Fort Walker CRM team also build on past successes to continue outreach efforts. The installation had hosted an annual reunion for former students of the Mica School held the last Sunday in September since the 1940s.
Since many of the students had passed in the 80-plus years since the event began, CRM staff established a partnership with the Caroline County Historical Society and Historic Port Royal to replace the Mica School Reunion with a joint event for the community starting in 2021.
In October 2021, the event included a presentation at a joint historic society meeting about the 1941 acquisition of the installation land and recent deed map research that had been completed. The current Mica School building was built in 1929, and the last graduating class was in 1940, just prior to the establishment of Fort Walker.
“Whether it is through hands-on fieldwork opportunities or simply exposure to interpretative signage about local historical sites such as Liberty Church or Civil War Winter Quarters, the CRM Program helps to provide unique events that bring the local community together to recognize the shared history of the installation and our nation,” said John Mullin, Fort Walker’s cultural resource manager.
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