07/04/2026
As we've learned, there are still surprises to discover under the soil of Fort McHenry!
History is alive at Fort McHenry.
📌 Fort McHenry — Baltimore, Maryland
📍 39°15'47.83"N, 76°34'47.56"W
One of America's most recognizable forts and the profile picture for this page, Fort McHenry is instantly identifiable by its distinctive pentagonal star-shaped design. These images highlight the remarkable geometry of the fort, revealing the five bastions, dry moat, ravelin, and outer defensive earthworks with exceptional clarity. Comparing the LiDAR to the satellite imagery also provides a unique perspective on how the carefully engineered landscape still dominates Locust Point more than two centuries after construction.
Built between 1798 and 1800 on the site of the earlier Fort Whetstone (1776 to 1797), Fort McHenry was designed by French engineer Jean Foncin to defend the increasingly important Port of Baltimore. The bastioned pentagonal layout allowed each point of the fort to provide overlapping fields of cannon and musket fire, while the surrounding dry moat served as the first line of defense against a land assault. The fort was named for James McHenry, a signer of the U.S. Constitution and Secretary of War under Presidents George Washington and John Adams.
Fort McHenry earned its place in American history during the Battle of Baltimore on September 13–14, 1814, when British warships bombarded the fort for more than 25 hours during the War of 1812. Despite the relentless attack, the American defenders held their ground. At dawn, the enormous 30-by-42-foot garrison flag was raised above the fort, signaling that Baltimore remained unconquered. Witnessing the flag still flying from aboard a British ship inspired Francis Scott Key to write Defence of Fort M'Henry, the poem that would later become "The Star-Spangled Banner," the national anthem of the United States.
LiDAR offers an appreciation of the precision of Fort McHenry's star fort design, the defensive moat, and the surrounding earthworks. All become strikingly more apparent from above, illustrating why this style of fortification represented the pinnacle of military engineering at the close of the 18th century and why Fort McHenry remains one of the nation's most iconic historic landscapes.
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