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Fort Williams
Fort Williams Park is a 90-acre park in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, encompassing numerous historical sites. Perhaps most famous for having Portland Head Light on its grounds, the park also encompasses the decommissioned and largely demolished United States Army post Fort Williams, which was operational during World War I and World War II. Historic sites Portland Head Light Portland Head Light is a lighthouse inside Fort Williams Park in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Construction began in 1787 at the directive of George Washington, and was completed on January 10, 1791. Today, Portland Head Light stands 80 feet above ground and 101 feet above water, its white conical tower being connected with a dwelling. The 200,000-candlepower, DCB 224 airport-style aerobeacon is visible from 24 miles away. The grounds and the keeper's house are owned by the town of Cape Elizabeth, while the beacon and fog signal are owned and maintained by the U.S. Coast Guard as a current aid to navigation. It was ad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fort Williams (Maine)
Fort Williams is a former United States Army fort in Cape Elizabeth, Maine which operated from 1872 to 1964. It was part of the Coast Defenses of Portland, later renamed the Harbor Defenses of Portland, a command which protected Portland's port and naval anchorage 1904–1950. After its closure, it was redeveloped into Fort Williams Park. History Endicott Period A 14-acre purchase near Portland Head Light in 1872 served to establish a sub-post to Fort Preble located at Spring Point. This fortification became known as Fort Williams on April 13, 1899, by order of Army Headquarters (General Order No. 17, Headquarters of the Army, Adjutant General's Office, Washington, D.C.). It was named for Brevet Major General Seth Williams. By 1903, the fort had grown to 90.45 acres. The Board of Fortifications, often called the Endicott Board, recommended a comprehensive program of new fortifications in 1885. Fort Williams was one of the results. It first test-fired its guns in 1898, sho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fort Williams Park Entrance
A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere'' ("to make"). From very early history to modern times, defensive walls have often been necessary for cities to survive in an ever-changing world of invasion and conquest. Some settlements in the Indus Valley civilization were the first small cities to be fortified. In ancient Greece, large stone walls had been built in Mycenaean Greece, such as the ancient site of Mycenae (famous for the huge stone blocks of its 'cyclopean' walls). A Greek '' phrourion'' was a fortified collection of buildings used as a military garrison, and is the equivalent of the Roman castellum or English fortress. These constructions mainly served the purpose of a watch tower, to guard certain roads, passes, and borders. Though smaller than a real fortress, they ac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cape Elizabeth, Maine
Cape Elizabeth is a town in Cumberland County, Maine, United States. The town is part of the Portland– South Portland–Biddeford, Maine, metropolitan statistical area. As of the 2020 census, Cape Elizabeth had a population of 9,535. Cape Elizabeth is the location of the Beach to Beacon 10K road race that starts at Crescent Beach State Park (the "beach") and ends at Portland Head Light (the "beacon"). The race draws runners from all parts of the U.S. and elite athletes from around the world. Cape Elizabeth has a single community school department. The Cape Elizabeth High School's team name is the "Capers". History English explorer Bartholomew Gosnold arrived at Cape Elizabeth in May 1602, during his explorations of what would later be called New England. At the southern tip of the promontory, Richmond Island was visited around 1605 by Samuel de Champlain and was the site of a trading post in 1628. John Smith explored and mapped New England in 1615, and gave names ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Portland Head Light
Portland Head Light is a historic lighthouse in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. The light station sits on a head of land at the entrance of the primary shipping channel into Portland Harbor, which is within Casco Bay in the Gulf of Maine. Completed in 1791, it is the oldest lighthouse in Maine. The light station is automated, and the tower, beacon, and foghorn are maintained by the United States Coast Guard, while the former lighthouse keepers' house is a maritime museum within Fort Williams Park. History Construction began in 1787 at the directive of George Washington, and was completed on January 10, 1791, using a fund of $1,500, established by him. Whale oil lamps were originally used for illumination. In 1855, following formation of the Lighthouse Board, a fourth-order Fresnel lens was installed; that lens was replaced by a second-order Fresnel lens, which was replaced later by an aerobeacon in 1958. That lens was replaced with a DCB-224 aerobeacon in 1991. The DCB-224 aerobeac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution, U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of the United States Constitution (1789). See alsTitle 10, Subtitle B, Chapter 301, Section 3001 The oldest and most senior branch of the U.S. military in order of precedence, the modern U.S. Army has its roots in the Continental Army, which was formed 14 June 1775 to fight the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783)—before the United States was established as a country. After the Revolutionary War, the Congress of the Confederation created the United States Army on 3 June 1784 to replace the disbanded Continental Army.Library of CongressJournals of the Continental Congress, Volume 27/ref> The United States Army considers itself to be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fighting occurring throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific Ocean, Pacific, and parts of Asia. An estimated 9 million soldiers were killed in combat, plus another 23 million wounded, while 5 million civilians died as a result of military action, hunger, and disease. Millions more died in Genocides in history (World War I through World War II), genocides within the Ottoman Empire and in the Spanish flu, 1918 influenza pandemic, which was exacerbated by the movement of combatants during the war. Prior to 1914, the European great powers were divided between the Triple Entente (comprising French Third Republic, France, Russia, and British Empire, Britain) and the Triple A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million Military personnel, personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Air warfare of World War II, Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the List of wars by death toll, deadliest conflict in hu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Goddard Mansion-396
Goddard may refer to: People * Goddard (given name) * Goddard (surname) Places in the United States *Goddard, Kansas *Goddard, Kentucky *Goddard, Maryland *Goddard College, a low-residency college with campuses in Vermont and Washington *Goddard Memorial State Park, Warwick, Rhode Island * Homer, Indiana, also known as Goddard *Maurice K. Goddard State Park, New Vernon Township, Pennsylvania Named after Robert H. Goddard * Goddard (crater), a lunar crater along the eastern limb of the Moon * Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph, a spectrograph installed on the Hubble Space Telescope * Goddard High School (New Mexico), Roswell, New Mexico * Goddard Space Flight Center, a major NASA space science laboratory in Greenbelt, Maryland ** Goddard Institute for Space Studies, component laboratory of Goddard Space Flight Center * Blue Origin Goddard, a private spacecraft which first flew in November 2006 * Version 13 of the popular Linux distribution Fedora, nicknamed Goddard * Goddard, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1st Maine Volunteer Cavalry Regiment
The 1st Maine Cavalry Regiment was a volunteer United States cavalry unit from Maine used during the American Civil War. Service history The regiment was organized in Augusta, Maine, on October 31, 1861, and served for three years. The original members were detached from the regiment on September 15, 1864, when their service was up, and mustered out back in Portland on November 25. Later recruits, along with the Maine men of the 1st District of Columbia Cavalry (men recruited in the Augusta, Maine area between January and March 1864 and consolidated into seven companies) and those who chose to reenlist, were retained in the regiment. The regiment was split into three battalions of four companies each. One battalion was made up of former 1st District men and the other two were a mix of 1st Maine veterans and DC men. These three battalions continued until the regiment's mustering out at Petersburg, Virginia, on August 1, 1865. Initial organization in 1861 Maine had responded to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states that had seceded. The central cause of the war was the dispute over whether slavery would be permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states, or be prevented from doing so, which was widely believed would place slavery on a course of ultimate extinction. Decades of political controversy over slavery were brought to a head by the victory in the 1860 U.S. presidential election of Abraham Lincoln, who opposed slavery's expansion into the west. An initial seven southern slave states responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding from the United States and, in 1861, forming the Confederacy. The Confederacy seized U.S. forts and other federal assets within their borders. Led by Confederate President Jefferson ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beach To Beacon 10K
The Toronto-Dominion Bank Beach to Beacon 10K is a road running event that takes place along the coastline of Cape Elizabeth, Maine. It begins at Crescent Beach State Park and ends at the Portland Head Light in Fort Williams Park. Starting out as mainly a local event, athletes from all over the U.S. and various parts of the world now participate in the annual event, including some world-class distance runners, including Olympic Marathon Silver medalists Catherine Ndereba and Meb Keflezighi, as well as Chicago Marathon winner Robert Kipkoech Cheruiyot. It was founded by U.S. women's marathon runner Joan Benoit Samuelson, who in 1984, won the first ever women's Olympic marathon. 1998 was the first year that the event was held and over 3000 runners participated in the race. From 1998 to 2004, the event was sponsored by the local People's Heritage Bank. Since 2005, the race has been organised and sponsored by Toronto, Ontario-based Toronto-Dominion Bank. The 2009 race event regist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Casco Bay
Casco Bay is an inlet of the Gulf of Maine on the southern coast of Maine, New England, United States. Its easternmost approach is Cape Small and its westernmost approach is Two Lights in Cape Elizabeth. The city of Portland sits along its southern edge and the Port of Portland lies within. European discovery There are two theories on the origin of the name "Casco Bay". ''Aucocisco'' is the Abenaki name for the bay, which means 'place of herons' (sometimes translated as 'muddy'). The Portuguese explorer Estêvão Gomes, mapped the Maine coast in 1525 and named the bay "Bahía de Cascos" (Bay of Helmets, based on the shape of the bay). The first colonial settlement in Casco Bay was that of Capt. Christopher Levett, an English explorer, who built a house on House Island in 1623–24. The settlement failed. The first permanent settlement of the bay was named Casco; despite changing names throughout history, that settlement remains the largest city in the Casco Bay region, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
