4301
West Braddock Road

Fort Ward was constructed starting in September 1861 under the supervision of the Army Corps of Engineers as one of sixty-eight enclosed forts encircling Washington. Sited on high ground in what was then the northwest of Alexandria County, it mounted thirty-six guns and commanded the Leesburg Turnpike and the approaches to the city ^[1] Source 1 NARA Civil War records Government record . The fort was named for Commander James H. Ward, the first Union naval officer killed in the war.

After the war, the earthworks were dismantled and the land passed into private hands. Beginning in the late 1860s, a community of formerly enslaved people and their descendants settled on and around the former fort grounds, drawn by the availability of inexpensive land. The community, which residents called simply “The Fort” or “Fort Ward,” included a church, a school, and a burying ground, and persisted as an identifiable neighborhood until midcentury urban renewal and the expansion of the adjacent cemetery displaced most of the remaining residents ^[2] Source 2 Alexandria Library Special Collections Manuscript . Ongoing archaeological work on the site has documented dwellings, wells, and burial features associated with the Fort Ward community.

The City of Alexandria acquired the site in 1961, partially reconstructed the earthworks for the Civil War centennial, and opened Fort Ward Park and Museum. The museum’s exhibits address both the military history of the fort and the African American community that followed it; the freedmen’s community is represented by the collective entity Freedmen of the Contrabands Camp Family Freedmen of the Contrabands Camp founded 1861 Collective entity representing the several thousand formerly enslaved people who fled to Union-occupied Alexandria during the Civil War, settling in camps at Shuter's Hill, around … ^[3] Source 3 LOC Prints & Photographs Photograph .