Fort Macon: Guardian of Beaufort Inlet

About five and a half miles to the southeast stands Fort Macon, a five-sided brick fortification built between eighteen twenty-six and eighteen thirty-four to guard Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina's only major deepwater ocean port. Designed by Brigadier General Simon Bernard after the War of eighteen twelve, it replaced an earlier earthwork called Fort Hampton. When North Carolina left the Union in eighteen sixty-one, local militia seized the fort without a shot.

Union forces retook it in April eighteen sixty-two after a naval and artillery bombardment. Today Fort Macon is a state park and one of the most visited historic sites in North Carolina, drawing more than a million visitors each year.