07/25/2026
📌 Fort Fisher — Kure Beach, North Carolina
📍 33°58'16.73"N, 77°55'7.44"W
Constructed between 1861 and 1863 at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, Fort Fisher was the Confederacy's largest earthen fort and the key to protecting Wilmington—the last major Atlantic port open to blockade runners during the Civil War. Rather than relying on traditional masonry walls, its massive earthworks, some nearly 30 feet thick, were designed to absorb the impact of heavy naval bombardment, making it one of the strongest coastal fortifications of its time.
LiDAR displays the surviving traverses, batteries, and defensive earthworks that once formed part of an L-shaped fortress stretching nearly 1.4 miles along the Atlantic shoreline and Cape Fear River. The fort mounted dozens of heavy guns and successfully repelled the first Union assault in December 1864 before falling after a massive combined land and naval attack on January 15, 1865. Its capture closed the Confederacy's final major supply route and hastened the collapse of General Robert E. Lee's army.
Today, only about ten percent of the original fort survives. More than a century of shoreline erosion, hurricanes, and changing coastal processes have claimed much of the sea face, yet LiDAR continues to preserve the remarkable engineering of one of the most significant Civil War fortifications in the United States.
