Fort Hunt History: PowerPoint Script – created by Park Ranger Patrick Sheridan for the George
Washington Memorial Parkway, a unit of the National Park Service.
This script is meant to accompany “Fort Hunt WWII History PowerPoint”: underlined text indicates that
the presentation should be advanced by one slide when this text is read.
Hello ladies and gentlemen. Today I’m going to tell you about the history of Fort Hunt Park, a
unit of the George Washington Memorial Parkway. Like the parkway itself, the history of Fort Hunt Park
encompasses a wide range of topics from the time of George Washington onward. In order to get a full
appreciation for the history of this land, however, it is necessary to look back even further. Let’s take
some time now to examine the chronology of this little piece of America, starting with a time many
thousands of years ago when the America we know today would have seemed inconceivably strange to
the people living here.
Archaeologists have in recent decades identified sites of prehistoric human activity in the
vicinity of Fort Hunt. These sites date back to over 8,000 years ago, to a time known as the Archaic
Period, when Fort Hunt would have made an ideal base camp location for bands of wandering hunters
and foragers.1 These early Americans took advantage of a warming climate with the end of the last Ice
Age, as well as abundant local food sources, leading simple lives and leaving few traces of their presence
behind.
Over the course of the next 4,000 to 5,000 years those roving foragers would have been
gradually replaced by the more sedentary lifestyle of the Woodland period, beginning around 3,200
years ago. The people of this period established permanent villages, agriculture, and also smaller camps
for exploiting seasonal resources. Fort Hunt was probably not a permanent village site, but it was mostlikely used for seasonal hunting and fishing each year;2 a theory backed up by the discovery of projectile
points and pottery shards nearby. Life here would have continued in that fashion, occasionally
interrupted by inter-tribe warfare, until the arrival of European explorers and colonists in the early 17th
century, beginning with John Smith in 1608 AD. Colonization by Europeans proceeded rapidly, and by
1680 most of the Native Americans from this area had moved out due to the encroaching newcomers.3
In this time period the land began to pass through what would become a long succession of
Colonial and then American owners. The first white man to directly claim this territory for himself was
named Giles Brent. Mr. Brent had in 1645 married the daughter of a powerful chief from the Piscataway
tribe and acquired large tracts of land in this area, including the land where Fort Hunt would one day
stand.4 In 1730, a man named William Clifton would acquire part of Brent’s former territory through
marriage. Via his wife’s inheritance and purchases from his brothers-in-law, Clifton would amass an
impressive 1,806 acre estate that would come to be called Clifton’s Neck,5 a name which would still be in
1
Laird, Matthew R., “By the River Potomac: An Historic Resource Study of Fort Hunt Park, George Washington
Memorial Parkway, Mount Vernon, Virginia,” prepared for the National Park Service, August 2000, page 1.
2
Ibid., 2.
3
Ibid.
4
Ibid., 3.
5
Ibid., 6.
use during Washington’s time several decades later. From 1741 onward a pair of families would lease
the part of Clifton’s Neck that today contains Fort Hunt. Much of the park you now see was leased by
the Sheridine family on the east side, with the western third of the park being part of the Hester family
parcel.6 These families were known to have grown tobacco and vegetables, and they also maintained
apple orchards. Despite not owning his own land, Mr. Sheridine became a quite successful farmer, even
managing to afford three high-value slaves.7 He was so successful, in fact, that his property would come
to be known as Sheridan’s Point even long after he was gone. Mr. Clifton sold the great majority of his
Clifton’s Neck land to his neighbor in 1760.8 That neighbor, of course, was George Washington.
Washington allowed the leaseholders, such as the Sheridine family, to stay on until the 1770s, but by
1773 he had already begun to incorporate the property into his massive farming operation.9
What is now Fort Hunt Park became a part of George Washington’s 5 large farms. Specifically,
the Clifton’s Neck area comprised most of the second-largest farm, called River Farm. Washington took
a very active role in the management of his farms, riding forth from his Mount Vernon estate each day
to inspect and direct his workers. Much of the labor on Washington’s farms was performed by slaves
under the direction of both white and black overseers, and at its height in the 1790s River Farm was
home to a thriving community of more than 57 slave laborers and their families.10 Under Washington’s
management, these workers raised a great variety of crops such as potatoes, corn, and wheat.
Washington maintained River Farm until his death in 1799, after which point it passed to his grandnephews George Fayette and Lawrence Augustine Washington under the protection of their stepfather
Tobias Lear.11
The rest of the century saw the property’s continued use as farmland, as well as a few changes
of ownership. Washington’s descendants retained ownership of the property until 1852, at which point
the property was bought and occupied by the Linton family from New Jersey.12 The Linton family lived
on and farmed the land during the Civil War, enduring occupation by Federal troops who were lenient
on them because of their origins in the north.13 Then in 1880, the Sheridan’s Point tract was acquired by
the Peltons, a family from New England.14 The Peltons and their neighbors continued to maintain quiet
farms in the area until 1893, when the land’s use would change from farming to national defense.
In the mid-1880s, the United States began to worry that its system of coastal defense which had
been so strong at the outbreak of the Civil War might no longer be up to the challenge of resisting a
modern navy. In 1885, President Grover Cleveland went about appointing what would come to be
known as the Endicott Board, named for Secretary of War William C. Endicott, to study the problem. The
Endicott Board determined that the defenses protecting Washington from an attack by sea were
6
Laird, Mathew R., ”By the River Potomac,” 6.
Ibid.
8
Ibid., 13.
9
Ibid., 14.
10
Ibid., 17.
11
Ibid., 26.
12
Ibid., 27.
13
Ibid. 30.
14
Ibid., 31.
7
inadequate, consisting mainly of Fort Washington, which had been built in 1814. In order to remedy the
situation, it was proposed that a new system of rifled artillery guns and concrete bunkers be created at
Fort Washington and also across the river at Sheridan’s Point.15 These two sites working in conjunction
with each other and with a system of minefields in the river would be able to effectively repel any
enemy force attempting to approach Washington by ship. The government acquired the land at
Sheridan’s point and work on the new defenses began in 1896. The first and largest of the new gun
batteries was ready in 1898,16 just before the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, and was initially
named Battery Sheridan’s Point, though it would soon be renamed Battery Mount Vernon.
Over the following two decades, the fort would add to its armament and housing facilities, but
never see action against hostile forces. The most dramatic episodes at the fort during this time period
revolved around the misdeeds of some of the commanding officers and a few errant shells that fell into
a Maryland farmer’s field in December, 1904.17 In 1917 the fort’s big guns would be removed, with some
being converted for use in Europe in WWI.18 The fort would continue to be garrisoned until 1921, when
the Army would establish a School of Finance on the grounds, which then closed down only 2 years
later.19
At the beginning of the following decade, a new series of notable events would begin to occur.
The first was the use of the fort as a training area by one of the rare African American ROTC units
starting in 1930.20 This ROTC unit, based out of Howard University, was one of only a few of its kind and
existed during a time when our society was still quite segregated, particularly in the military. The
following year brought the completion of the Mount Vernon Memorial Highway leading to Alexandria,
which greatly increased the accessibility for tourism in the area. From 1933 onward, the fort would be
owned by the National Park Service, though it would see use for national defense again only a decade
later.
In the intervening period, interesting things continued to happen there. The fort became a
haven for Bonus Marchers, soldiers who felt the nation owed them additional compensation for their
service, during some of the early years of the Great Depression. These Bonus Marchers had a special
guest in the form of Eleanor Roosevelt on May 16th, 1933,21 as she inspected the camp and conversed
with the veterans there. In order to help alleviate the economic depression the country was
experiencing, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt devised a plan to recruit unemployed youths for work
on federally-funded conservation projects. This lead to the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps,
and many of the former Bonus Marchers were folded into it. Fort Hunt became the base for CCC camp
15
Laird, Matthew R., “By the River Potomac,” 37.
Ibid., 38.
17
Ibid., 59-60.
18
Ibid., 66.
19
Ibid., 67-68.
20
Ibid., 69.
21
Ibid., 73.
16
NP-6 in 1933,22 with conservation projects being run from the fort until the beginning of the next
decade.
In 1939, the CCC enrollees had some special guests of their own. On June 9th the camp played
host King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of England,23 who conducted their own thorough inspection of
the camp and asked many questions of the young men there. These royal visitors were quite interested
in the historic CCC program, as the King had undertaken the creation of similar camps for boys in his
own country, and camp NP-6 at Fort Hunt was not only convenient to Washington DC and Mount
Vernon, but it was also held up as a model CCC camp for the entire nation.24 Soon after that happy visit,
however, the United States would find itself looking on as Europe sank under the weight of Nazi
aggression. With the war in Europe looking like it might engulf the whole world, preparations were
begun to ensure the United States would be ready if hostilities came our way.
During and leading up to World War II, Fort Hunt served the United States’ war effort in a
variety of ways. The majority of these efforts were hidden from public view, but some were so secret
that even the base personnel didn’t know about them. Fort Hunt’s proximity to Washington DC
combined with its relative isolation to boost the location’s attractiveness for clandestine operations.
Primarily for those reasons it came to be the home of 4 distinct operations between the years of 1939
and 1946. These operations, with one exception, were conducted by the War Department via a special
use permit issued by the Department of the Interior which provided for protection of the area’s
historical and natural features while allowing the essential national defense work to proceed largely
unimpeded.25
The first operation involved antennae, head phones, and tape recorders. Around the end of
September, 1939, the newly-created Army Signal Intelligence service spent $4,280 to renovate the old
hospital building at Fort Hunt.26 Their improvements to the building made it ready for the installation of
radio receiving and recording equipment which they then used to monitor countries perceived to be a
threat to the United States. At the time, the four countries topping the United States’ watch-list were
Germany, Japan, Italy, and somewhat surprisingly, Mexico. Though little is known about what intercepts
the facility may have made, the operation was evidently considered important enough to warrant
tighter security. In February of 1940 the Army again invested some money in the facility; this time in
order to secure the listening post with a steel fence to keep out the curious, as there were still CCC
enrollees present on the grounds and dozens of families living within a few hundred yards of the base.27
The second operation to make its home in Fort Hunt during the war years was somewhat unique
in that it was the only one which did not directly involve any branch of the US military. Almost
immediately after the shocking attack on Pearl Harbor, the officials in charge of the National Archives
22
Laird, Matthew R., “By The River Potomac,” 75.
Ibid., 83.
24
Ibid., 82.
25
Ibid. 90-91.
26
Ibid., 88.
27
Ibid., 88-89.
23
convened a “Committee on Protection Against the Hazards of War.”28 They were concerned with the
possibility of an enemy attack or a military mishap wiping out large portions of the nation’s records.
Their concern was compounded by the fact that much of their motion picture and photograph collection
was then stored on cellulose nitrate film, which was very delicate and also very dangerous. Nitrate film
was extremely flammable and should the collection be ignited it would not only create a large and
dangerous fire but it would also release toxic fumes which could poison workers and hamper an
emergency response.29 For these reasons the Archives officials turned to the well-protected and yet
remote antique concrete gun batteries at Fort Hunt as their nitrate film storage location from 1942 to
1946. Ultimately the gun batteries would come to hold not only the Archives’ material, but also that of
at least 10 other federal agencies until it was all transferred to other facilities.30
The third operation based in Fort Hunt was the largest in terms of manpower and facilities. This
program would proceed under the designation MIS-Y, though its facilities would be available for joint
usage by both the Military Intelligence Service and the Office of Naval Intelligence. MIS-Y created a large
prison compound on the grounds of Fort Hunt beginning in 1942,31 complete with all things one might
expect to find in a POW camp – like guard towers, barbed wire, and gated cells – as well as some things
that were a bit more unorthodox.
In order to escape certain restricting POW rights as set forth in the Geneva Convention of 1929,
the facility at Fort Hunt was classified as a “Temporary Detention Center.” This semantic sidestep
allowed the War Department to create somewhat harsher conditions for the POWs by failing to provide
them with the same access to physical exercise, social interaction, and mail that they would be required
to receive in a full-fledged POW camp. This minor mistreatment was thought to make it easier to
interrogate the prisoners32 – and that interrogation was the main reason for the camp’s existence.
The “temporary” measures taken to make the camp unpleasant for its guests were
supplemented with state-of-the-art listening devices which were embedded in the walls and ceilings of
the cells in order to eavesdrop on the POWs’ conversations. Officers fluent in German and trained in
stenography took turns monitoring these devices from early in the morning until late at night, hoping to
catch any snippet that the War Department could use from chats between cellmates. As the POWs,
particularly the more senior officers, could be expected to resist providing sensitive information to their
captors during direct interrogations, these secret devices yielded useful information on many occasions
when they went unnoticed by the POWs.33
The benefits gained from hidden listening devices should by no means overshadow the
achievements of the dedicated interrogation staff who worked at Fort Hunt. These officers worked
tirelessly to research their marks so that they would be able to effectively extract information from
28
Laird, Matthew R., “By The River Potomac,” 89.
Ibid., 90.
30
Ibid.
31
Ibid., 92.
32
Ibid. 91-92.
33
Ibid., 109.
29
them. Because torture was not part of the US modus operandi at Fort Hunt, the contest between the
interrogators and POWs took place largely in the mental realm. The interrogators were allowed a lot of
leeway in developing their strategies, so some took a hostile approach and challenged their prisoners to
political debates while others attempted to find a soft spot on their marks by discussing the effects of
the war on family and friends back home. Still others used cigarettes and liquor to loosen lips and curry
favor with the deprived POWs,34 who in some cases came to look forward to their interrogation sessions
because of the pampering and camaraderie they would enjoy. These methods allowed interrogators to
gain insights of all kinds, from strategic information such as locations of enemy units, to the tactical
capabilities of enemy vehicles and weapons, all the way to the psychological effects that Allied bombing
was having on civilians.
Ultimately the MIS-Y program was so successful that a second fenced compound was added on
the Fort Hunt grounds. More than 3,400 enlisted men, officers, and even scientists passed through the
gates of Fort Hunt and were squeezed for any information that could help win the war. More translators
and interrogators were brought in to accommodate Japanese prisoners from the Pacific Theatre. Only
one POW would ever attempt to escape – a famous U-boat captain by the name of Werner Henke – and
he would be shot and killed before making it past the double row of fences.35 Meanwhile, the
information that these detainees provided had a significant impact on the Allies’ knowledge of their
enemy and ability to fight him effectively.36
While the nitrate film rested safely in its concrete bunkers and the post’s guards kept careful
watch from their towers, another clandestine operation was underway, nestled inside a pair of
moderately-sized buildings near the modern-day site of Pavilion A in Fort Hunt Park. This operation was
so secret that while the post commander was aware of its presence, he was not aware of its activities.37
Inside those two modest wooden structures, a handful of men labored at a series of worktables and
packing counters. The fruits of their labors would reach across oceans, across enemy territory, and
through the barbed wire of prison camps all across Eastern Europe. These men were the Escape and
Evasion specialists of the United States, and their top-secret unit was known as MIS-X.
Escape and Evasion was an idea that originated largely with the division of British Military
Intelligence known as MI-9. Based on their experiences in World War I, when over 100,000 British
soldiers had escaped the clutches of the Germans and returned safely to their own lines, MI-9 hoped to
have similar success in World War II and yet recognized that special measures needed to be taken
against the police state that was Nazi Germany. Hitler recognized the potential for Allied POWs to
escape back to England and return to fight another day, so he personally ordered that his prison camps
be located in Eastern Europe. This necessitated a dangerous trek across occupied territory for any
would-be Allied escapers, with Nazi checkpoints and Hitler Youth search parties making detection
34
Laird, Matthew R., “By The River Potomac,” 100.
Ibid., 112.
36
Ibid., 113.
37
Shoemaker, Lloyd R., The Escape Factory: The Story of MIS-X, The Super-Secret U.S. Agency Behind World War
II’s Greatest Escapes, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1990, pages 5-6.
35
almost inevitable. To succeed in such circumstances, the Allies would need special training and
sophisticated escape aids, and this was where MI-9 and MIS-X came in. 38
MI-9 and MIS-X had several different facets in their plan to facilitate and encourage escape by
Allied Prisoners of War. One of the most important aspects was training servicemen in the art of escape
and evasion. The secret organizations developed evasion kits of useful materials that Allied air crews
could take with them on missions over occupied Europe.39 These kits consisted of orienteering tools like
compasses and maps that would allow the evaders to find their way back home, but they also contained
practical items like knives and fishing line40 so that the downed airmen could feed themselves without
venturing into villages where they would almost certainly be spotted. Training in the use of these items
allowed many to return home without setting foot in a prison camp. Every so often, however, the
trainers would select a special pupil or two to be gifted with an extra ability that they were only to
reveal under very special circumstances.
One of the key pieces of MIS-X’s secret operations was the use of coded communications.
Escape and Evasion briefers were instructed to select especially intelligent and trustworthy men from
each unit they trained to be made into code users, or CUs.41 These CUs were then sworn to secrecy
regarding their ability and instructed to establish contact with the War Department through coded
letters should they ever be captured. These letters looked exactly like normal correspondence, down to
the address line where the POW used a family member or friend, but when they passed through the US
Postal System they would be sorted separately because the Postal Service had been instructed to keep
an eye out for certain names among the POW mail. Upon seeing one of those names, the postal sorters
would dutifully send it on to P.O. Box 1142, Alexandria, VA without having any idea why. Unbeknownst
to almost everyone outside Fort Hunt, P.O. Box 1142 was the fort’s mailing address and code-name.
Once at Fort Hunt secret messages could be decoded by the specially-trained staff in the building
dubbed “The Creamery.”42 MIS-X would then respond to the message, assuming the identity of the
relative or friend to whom the letter was addressed, but concealing secret instructions in the text of
their reply.43 The Postal Service would again cooperate by slipping these messages back into the normal
mail stream, giving them the appropriate postmarks based on where they were supposed to be from.44
MIS-X also specialized in smuggling. Ordinarily, smuggling is something that governments frown
upon, and usually do their best to interdict. Not so during World War II, as the governments of Allied
countries cooperated to shuffle special parcels into the normal mail channels so that they would arrive
innocently at German prison camps amongst all the other care packages for POWs. 45These parcels
contained a mixture of genuine care package items like food, uniforms, and board games, but some also
38
Shoemaker, Lloyd R., The Escape Factory, 7-8.
Ibid., 12.
40
Ibid., 18.
41
Ibid. 19.
42
Ibid., 17.
43
Ibid., 21.
44
Ibid., 31.
45
Ibid.
39
concealed innocuous-looking yet illegal items. Silk maps, razor sharp gigili saws, radio parts, compasses,
currency, forged documents, civilian clothes, and sometimes even weapons46 were secreted away inside
mundane items so that the German censors and inspectors wouldn’t suspect a thing.
The Germans were certainly not fools, and no package was given to the POWs in their custody
without being opened and checked by a censor. This meant that the MIS-X tradesmen had to get
creative in concealing their contraband. Checkerboards were steamed apart and hollowed to contain
documents and cash.47 Precision saws were used to cut invisible seams into shaving and shoe brushes,48
which were then split open and hollowed to contain compasses and counterfeit bills. Razor-sharp,
flexible gigili49 saws were used to line the collars of uniforms. Baseballs50 and cribbage boards51
contained parts for crystal radio sets. These and many other brilliant hiding places were conceived of
right here in Fort Hunt and put into production by the patriotic executives of several major companies.
Games manufacturers, cigarette companies, baseball craftsmen and many others all put their hands and
their minds to work for the war effort by concealing contraband in their products as instructed by the
craftsmen at Fort Hunt. This allowed the Fort Hunt crew to conceal a much larger quantity of material
than was possible when they were working alone. Amazingly, all the manufacturers honored their
pledges of secrecy even decades after the war had ended, despite the fact that their efforts had kept the
Third Reich off-balance and helped to win World War II in Europe.52
After the war, almost all the military structures at Fort Hunt were demolished, leaving only faint
traces that they had ever been there at all. The records for the clandestine operations were burned53
and the secrets of their operation locked away behind the sealed lips of their agents. In truth, very little
about the operation would be known by anyone today if not for the efforts of a small handful of
individuals, such as Lloyd R. Shoemaker, who served at MIS-X during the war and compiled the story of
that particular adventure in his 1990 book, “The Escape Factory.” I urge anyone who is interested to
check out that book, as it served as a primary source for much of the information I’ve imparted to you
today. And next time you pass by Fort Hunt, remember that things are not always what they seem, and
that over the long course of human history even the most mundane place might contain traces of
extraordinary events.
46
Shoemaker, Lloyd R., 115-126.
Ibid., 25.
48
Ibid., 39-40.
49
Ibid., 8.
50
Ibid., 104-108.
51
Ibid., 85.
52
Ibid., 103-114.
53
Ibid. 205.
47
Bibliography
Disclaimer: The preceding essay was created as an educational aid in order to summarize the history of
Fort Hunt Park in a short amount of time and not as a work of original research. As a summary, it
depended heavily and exclusively on the following two works:
Laird, Matthew R., “By the River Potomac: An Historic Resource Study of Fort Hunt Park, George
Washington Memorial Parkway, Mount Vernon, Virginia,” prepared for the National Park
Service by Cultural Resources, Inc., Fredericksburg, VA, August 2000.
Shoemaker, Lloyd R., The Escape Factory: The Story of MIS-X, The Super-Secret U.S. Agency Behind
World War II’s Greatest Escapes, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1990.