Fort Adams State Park

Construction of the current Fort Adams began in 1824 under the direction of Simon Bernard, a French military engineer who had served under Napoleon, and continued for 33 years. The Third System design — a style of masonry coastal fortification developed for the young American republic — required an estimated 250,000 tons of granite and created one of the most technically sophisticated defensive works in the Western Hemisphere. The fort's position at the mouth of Narragansett Bay was intended to control access to Newport Harbor and Narragansett Bay.

At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, the Secretary of the Navy ordered the U.S. Naval Academy to evacuate Annapolis, Maryland, which was surrounded by secessionist sentiment. The Academy relocated to Fort Adams, where midshipmen trained and graduated for three years before returning to Annapolis in 1865. The fort housed Confederate prisoners during this period and continued as an active Army post through the early twentieth century.

Two documented violent incidents mark the fort's history. In the 1800s, a soldier was beaten to death by a fellow enlisted man inside the fortification — an event preserved in the fort's internal records. In the 1920s, a jealous soldier shot his wife on the grounds after discovering her with another man; she survived the wound, but the assailant died by suicide at the scene. Fort Adams was decommissioned in 1950 and transferred to the state of Rhode Island, which operates it today as a state park managed through the Fort Adams Trust.

The fort was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1978. Restoration of the casemates and tunnels has been ongoing since the 1990s, and the structure today is considered one of the best-preserved examples of Third System fortification architecture in the country.