Maine: Augusta – Old Fort Western

One thing that I wanted to do while we were in Augusta was to visit Old Fort Western.

Some history here …

The area known as Cushnoc on the Kennebec River (now Augusta) was an important strategic location for the early peoples of the Kennebec Valley.  In 1628, the Plymouth Colony built and established a trading post on the bank of the Kennebec River at Cushnoc. 

The threat of war with the French and the Native Americans made it hard for settlements to thrive. To protect the territory it was determined that a fort would need to be built at Teconnet Falls. The problem here was that ships could only sail up the Kennebec River as far as Cushnoc. 

The trading company who ran the post at Cushnoc made a proposal to Royal Governor, William Shirley that if the Province of Massachusetts built a provincial fort at Teconnet Falls (Fort Halifax)  they would build a fortified “storehouse” at Cushnoc (Fort Western) as long as Massachusetts would man both forts. 

The purpose for building these forts was two-fold: to encourage the resettlement of the Kennebec River and to provide necessary stores to Fort Halifax. Provincial stores came up the Kennebec River and were unloaded and stored at Fort Western. When river conditions were right, they were loaded onto flat-bottomed bateaux and portaged 17 miles upriver to Fort Halifax. The captain of Fort Western was Captain James Howard who commanded 23 men including his four sons; John, James Jr. Samuel & William. Colonel William Lithgow commanded Fort Halifax where 100 men were garrisoned.

The English capture of Quebec in 1759 reduced the threat of war in the Kennebec Valley. Within a year the number of soldiers at Fort Western was reduced to just ten and the number of soldiers at Fort Halifax was reduced as well. Forts Western and Halifax became militarily obsolete and were decommissioned in 1767 and 1766 respectively.

In 1767 Captain Howard purchased the fort for £500. Samuel and William Howard operated a store from the premises for the next forty years. Unfortunately, the Embargo Act of 1807 quickly put the Howard Store out of business. Howard family descendants continued to live in the old garrison building until the 1850s. In the mid-1850s, the Howard family descendants moved out of the old garrison building and it became a tenement.  The garrison was split up into up to eight apartments.  In 1919 the tenement housed Augusta’s burgeoning working class, particular those that worked in the Mills of Augusta and Hallowell.  The Fort was mentioned often in the Kennebec Journal and was considered the “mean” part of town.

The Fort was taken over by the City of Augusta through eminent domain in 1919 and turned over to Howard descendants William H Gannett and Guy P Gannett between 1921 and 1922. The Gannetts renovated the garrison and built two new blockhouses patterned after the original blockhouse that remained at Fort Halifax. They then gifted the building back to the City of Augusta and it opened as a museum on July 4th, 1922.

In 1976, Fort Western became a National Historic Landmark.