Fort Frederick State Park is a lush, 585-acre expanse surrounding Fort Frederick, which was built 1756-1757 to support British interests (and as a place for Indian-threatened settlers to huddle) in the French & Indian War. It proved to be quite a haul for me, coming from Richmond VA, but you gotta go where the starforts are, because they ain't coming to you.

There is a kind of weird little Visitor's Center that one encounters at some distance from the fort, which is small but well-appointed. I had to pay a $5 day-use fee as an out-of-state resident.

Captain Wort's Sutler's Shop is located right at the fort. This was a delightful little log-cabiny place, selling an excellent array of fort-related stuff, as well as supplies for campers, as the park has a campground.

Everyone with whom I came in contact at the park was friendly and helpful. Very few other folks were around visiting the fort, which likely had a lot to do with the fact that it was raining.

What surprised me about Fort Frederick was how great it looked on the outside, and how unfinished it seemed on the inside.

The fort was used in the French & Indian War, the US Revolutionary War (as a prison for British POWs) and the US Civil War, and then left to crumble. The Civilian Conservation Corps was rustled up in the 1930's, and Maryland Governor Harry Nice spearheaded the effort to rebuild Fort Frederick, which admirably accomplished the task of rebuilding the walls, but little else.

Two of the three buildings that had been inside the fort when it was originally constructed were rebuilt in the 1970's, but no effort was ever made to restore the interior of the fort to its original condition:   As such,   the inside of the fort, without

any visible means of mounting cannon, seems oddly barren.

Some of the barracks rooms in the buildings that are there are very nicely done up to appear as they would have in 1758, and there are period-dressed re-enactors who amble about, doing period things such as firing muskets and building fires...and I don't wish it to sound as though I was disappointed by the inside of the fort, because it still very much filled me with starfort proximity giddiness...it just seemed incomplete. Any reconstruction effort without unlimited funds is bound to be an eternal work in progress, however.

Won't you click on any of these thumbnails to see the full-sized pix and read more about my visit? You are very kind indeed.