2 Background on Fort 

 Hancock, Sandy Hook 



Coastal fortifications and military posts have been located at the northern end 

 of Sandy Hook, NJ, since the mid 1700's. This strategic location guards the 

 major navigation routes into New York Harbor. Construction of Fort Hancock 

 began in 1857, and by 1874 Sandy Hook was designated as the Army's first 

 proving grounds for munition and weapon testing. Consequently, various 

 generations of large shore-based artillery and mortar batteries were built at Fort 

 Hancock at the north end of this sand spit (Figure 2). Remnants of the 

 fortifications constructed from the 1890's until the 1940's are still in place at this 

 formerly used defense site and maintained by the National Park Service. From 

 1874 until World War I, a 4-mile stretch of beach and coastal dunes extending to 

 the south and the offshore in several directions were used as target areas for the 

 nation's primary artillery proving ground. Various naval and army artillery and 

 experimental rounds were tested along with proof firing of barrels for government 

 acceptance. This long-term use of Sandy Hook for military training and artillery 

 proofing has resulted in ordnance contamination of large sections of Sandy Hook 

 proper and the nearshore (U.S. Army Engineer (USAE) District, St Louis 1993). 

 A wide variety of ordnance (light artillery to 15-in. cannonballs), dating from the 

 Civil War through World War II , have been and are currently being recovered 

 from Sandy Hook and adjacent areas. 



During the pilot study reported here, each remnant battery and proving station 

 at Fort Hancock was located and its position determined using a hand-held Global 

 Positioning System (GPS) receiver. These positions were entered into the project 

 Geographic Information System (GIS) database and are plotted in Figure 2. This 

 mapping analysis was conducted to locate the Sea Bright borrow relative to Fort 

 Hancock and its documented firing ranges to ascertain the potential for Fort 

 Hancock to be the source of the observed ordnance contamination. In addition, an 

 historical summary of the various batteries (caliber, range, firing zones, etc.) was 

 developed (Table 1) based on information available through the Fort Hancock 

 National Park. 1 It is known that the coastal batteries trained on targets that were 

 towed in the Atlantic. Firing fans tended to cover the hemisphere from the north 

 through the eastern quadrants to the south-southeast (directly down the line of the 



Personal Communication, Thomas Hoffman, National Park Service, Fort Hancock, Sandy 

 Hook, N.J. 



Chapter 2 Background on Fort Hancock 



