Fort Strong--Boston Harbor, Long Island

[+pgrig]

After figuring out how to get permission to get out on Long Island, I spent the day on November 16th tromping around Fort Strong, one of Boston's coastal defense artillery forts whose heyday was the period 1889 through WWI.

 

This map from the Scaredy Cat Benchmark Viewer shows the 11 marks scattered around the fort. One station accounts for four of these: the main station, two surviving RMs, and one destroyed RM. My report on this find, MY0007, contains many of my photos. Many more are part of a Note to MY0007 that describes Fort Strong.

 

In addition to MY0007, I found MY4482 (not hard--it's the existing lighthouse ) Four marks I reported as Destroyed (MY4480, MY4481, MY4484 and MY4485). One (MY4581) was deemed Not Found after a three-hour battle with GPSr, metal detector, probe, and shovel. And two (MY4479 and MY4579) were not searched for, since I shied away from making my way down the very steep, brush-and-bramble covered north slope of the fort to check them out. So there's more to do...

 

One more station will be logged as Not Found (but is almost certainly lost)--MY4536--FORT, which is a bit further SW on the former parade ground of the fort, more recently redeveloped into a large children's summer camp by the City of Boston.

 

On the way off the island, I stopped to check out a pair of 19th Century marks (MY4448 and MY4449), but my GPSr said they had almost certainly been lost to erosion of the causeway bank.

 

A good day....

 

[This was supposed to show up under the Good Day thread, but I must have twitched... Sorry ]

Edited November 23, 2009 by pgrig

[2oldfarts (the rockhounders)]

Good to hear that you had a good day and enjoyed the recoveries. Not enough people share their recovery experiences. Guess they think others will expect the exceptional recoveries and not the ones that make for a good day of benchmarking.

 

Great reporting and adding the old photos is a nice touch.

 

Thanks for the reading pleasure.

 

John

[monkeykat]

Looked like a lot of fun, thanks for sharing.

[+Shorelander]

Holy moley pgrig, I wish I was still in Boston so I could tag along with you on these!

[+pgrig]

Shorelander--

 

I'm spending some T-giving time plotting another visit out to Nahant, treading in your footsteps through the fire control towers and steel disks (including Ft. Ruckman)! I think this time I will knock on a rich person's door and see if I can actually climb up inside one of the "enveloped" towers. You are gone, but your reports live on!

-Paul