I spent the day Saturday visiting Fort Worden and Fort Flagler on the Olympic Peninsula. These forts, along with Fort Casey on Whidbey Island, protected the entrance to Puget Sound from foreign naval invasion. It is not really clear to me who the threat was back in 1898 when we built these fortifications but since we were fighting a war with Spain at the time (we won, BTW) I can only assume it was them. In any case, the forts are actually massive concrete gun emplacements. They took ten years to build and the army began disassembling them almost as soon as they were completed - sending the guns off to Europe to fight against the Germans (but not the Spanish) in World War I. The army finally gave up on the idea of protecting Washington's waterways in 1976 and turned the forts over to the state for use as parks. The state turned the barracks, mess halls and other Victorian-era buildings in to conference centers but they were stumped when it came to re-purposing the concrete bunkers. In the end, they decided to put up informational signs and historical markers and then just turn the public loose on them. The graffiti artists answered the call.
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