350-Year Military Site at the Narrows
210 New York Avenue, Staten Island, NY 10305
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free admission. Part of Gateway National Recreation Area.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Mixed; paved overlook areas, stairs and uneven surfaces inside Battery Weed and Fort Tompkins, which are accessible by guided tour only
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1655 · National Register of Historic Places · Gateway National Recreation Area · Continuous Military Use 1655-1994
The Narrows separates New York Bay's upper and lower halves, the natural defensive choke point for any maritime approach to lower Manhattan. The site that became Fort Wadsworth was first fortified in 1655, when Dutch settler David Pieterszen de Vries built a blockhouse on what is now called Signal Hill. The British took control with the rest of New York colony in 1664 and maintained military presence at the site through the colonial period.
New York State assumed control in 1806 and built four forts at the site, completed in 1808. These included the red sandstone Forts Richmond and Tompkins. The state's mid-19th century rebuilding under federal direction produced the surviving structures: Battery Weed, completed in 1861 on the site of Fort Richmond, and Fort Tompkins, rebuilt in the same period on Signal Hill behind it. The complex was renamed Fort Wadsworth in 1865 to honor Brigadier General James Wadsworth, killed at the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864.
Fort Wadsworth served continuously through both World Wars and the Cold War, with periodic upgrades to coastal artillery and missile systems. Prior to its 1994 closure, it was claimed to be the longest continuously garrisoned military installation in the United States, with 339 years of unbroken service. The fort closed under the Base Realignment and Closure process and was transferred to the National Park Service.
Fort Wadsworth is now part of the Staten Island Unit of Gateway National Recreation Area. The Visitor Center, located on New York Avenue, operates Friday through Monday from 10 AM to 4 PM. The grounds are open daily, and the interior of Battery Weed and Fort Tompkins are accessible only on guided tours scheduled seasonally by park rangers.
Sources
The reported phenomena at Fort Wadsworth tend toward the disorienting rather than the dramatic. Multiple visitor accounts describe a soldier figure observed walking on a deliberate course through the lower fortification areas, passing through walls and parked cars without altering its movement, then disappearing. The figure is consistently described in dark uniform; observers do not specify a particular war's clothing.
A more unusual category of report involves brief subjective episodes among visitors at the older fortifications. One account, repeated in regional folklore literature, describes a woman who reported a momentary perceptual shift while walking through Fort Tompkins, with a brief view of a wartime hospital scene and a soldier yelling at her to take cover before she returned to the present. Similar reports describe visitors momentarily seeing the empty parade ground populated with figures of injured soldiers, the impression dissolving on a second look.
The character of these reports differs from typical apparition accounts. They are described less as observed presences and more as intrusions of remembered events, the kind of experience that paranormal literature labels residual or place-memory phenomena. Whether these reports reflect anything beyond the suggestive power of an old fort with a long combat-adjacent history is not something the National Park Service interprets.
The Visitor Center provides ranger-led tours that cover the fort's military history without addressing the paranormal reports. The grounds remain a popular spot for sunset views of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge and lower Manhattan, and most visitors come for those rather than for the ghost stories.
Walk the grounds of the former military reservation, with the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge directly overhead and views across to Brooklyn and Manhattan. The exterior of the red sandstone Battery Weed and Fort Tompkins can be approached at any time. The visitor center is open Friday through Monday 10 AM to 4 PM.
Battery Weed and Fort Tompkins interiors are accessible only on ranger-led tours, scheduled seasonally. Tours interpret the mid-19th century coastal defense system and the fort's role across multiple wars from the War of 1812 through the Cold War.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Sharpsburg, MD
Antietam National Battlefield preserves the site of the September 17, 1862 Battle of Antietam, in which combined Union and Confederate casualties reached 22,717 dead, wounded, or missing — the bloodiest single day in American military history. The Union strategic victory ended Robert E. Lee's first invasion of the North and gave President Lincoln the political opening to issue the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation five days later.
Petersburg, VA
Petersburg National Battlefield preserves sites associated with the Siege of Petersburg, a nine-and-a-half-month Civil War operation from June 1864 to April 1865 in which the Union Army under Grant cut Confederate supply lines into Richmond. The siege's most-recounted action is the July 30, 1864 Battle of the Crater. Approximately 70,000 soldiers became casualties during the siege; the war effectively ended within days of the Confederate evacuation of Petersburg.
Fernandina Beach, FL
Fort Clinch on Amelia Island in northeast Florida is a Third System masonry coastal fort begun in 1847 and never fully completed. The fort changed hands twice during the American Civil War, served briefly as a Spanish-American War garrison, and is now operated as Fort Clinch State Park by the Florida Park Service.