Fort Greble park playground
See the Civil War Defenses of Washington Park Map web page for an interactive fort location map.
LOCATION
The site of Fort Greble is now a recreation area located at the end of Elmira Street, SW. There is a small parking lot at the end of the road. The site does not have a National Park Service information panel that gives a brief history of the fort as do most units of the Civil War Defenses of Washington, but there is an entrance sign that reads, “Fort Greble / Fort Circle Parks.”
Playground was built to emulate Fort Greble
WHAT TO SEE
The National Park Service claims there are no remnants of Fort Greble at what is now a Washington, D. C., public park, but if you look at the field just south of the basketball courts, the terrain looks very much like it could have been part of a Civil War-era fort. The sunken depression is similar to a fort’s interior, while the hills that ring the depression could be former walls. However, the information panel about the park’s playground, which was built to resemble the fort, claims that Fort Greble was actually located to the north. If that is the case, it would be on the other side of Chesapeake Street, which borders the baseball field on the opposite side of the playground. There is a wooded lot on this property.
This sunken depression may be part of Fort Greble
HISTORY
Fort Greble is the southernmost Union fort within the boundary of Washington, D. C. Like Battery Carroll to the north, its guns were able to cover the Potomac River just before the fork of the Anacostia River. The city of Alexandria was also within range. Situated on the shore of the Potomac in Virginia, Alexandria was overrun by federal troops the day after Virginia seceded from the Union. The fort never saw any action during the war, but it was used as a training ground.
Fort Greble was named after Lieutenant J. T. Greble, a man killed at Big Bethel, Virginia, in July 1861.
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Last updated on April 26, 2020
