Fort Foster, Coastal defense fort in Kittery, York County, United States
Fort Foster is a coastal defense fort on Kittery Point in Maine, positioned to guard the entrance to Portsmouth Harbor where the Piscataqua River meets the Atlantic Ocean. The grounds include gun emplacements, ammunition magazines, and observation posts spread across a raised peninsula and linked by paved pathways.
Fort Foster was built around 1900 as part of a national effort to protect key harbors along the East Coast, replacing older, obsolete defensive positions in the area. During World War II, the installation was brought back into active use to monitor ship traffic and guard the nearby Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.
Fort Foster sits on Kittery Point, a peninsula surrounded on three sides by water, which gives the place a distinctive feel that visitors notice right away. The preserved gun positions and bunkers can be explored up close, offering a direct sense of how soldiers lived and worked at the harbor entrance.
The grounds are open seasonally and are reached by a short drive to Kittery Point, where parking is available near the entrance. Wear sturdy shoes since some areas around the bunkers and gun positions have uneven ground, and give yourself enough time to walk the full circuit of the peninsula.
Fort Foster was built on the grounds of an earlier 19th-century fortification called Fort Kittery, which was largely dismantled before the new structures went up. Traces of the earlier layout can still be spotted in the shape of the terrain by visitors who look closely as they walk around.
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