Fighting 

 A New Foe. 



By Nancy Davis 



"rive south on Highway 421 as far as you 

 can go. 



You'll end up on the southernmost tip of New 

 Hanover County on a narrow strip of land that's 

 bordered by the Cape Fear River on one side 

 and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. 



It's on that piece of shifting sand that Confed- 

 erate soldiers constructed Fort Fisher, one of the 

 largest earthen forts ever built. It was to guard 

 the lower Cape Fear River and keep the port of 

 Wilmington open to the blockade runners that 

 supplied the South. 



And it did its job until the final days of the war, 

 when Yankee soldiers, far outnumbering the Con- 

 federates, finally seized it. 



Now, 125 years later, the fort is under seige 

 again. But this time, the enemy is the sea. 



The Atlantic Ocean is relentlessly bombarding 

 the historic fort. And with every wave, history is 

 washing away. 



Gehrig Spencer, Fort Fisher historic site man- 

 ager, estimates the sea has claimed as much as 

 80 percent of the earthworks. And in a last-ditch 

 effort, he and other historians are trying to keep 

 what's left of the fort from falling into the sea. 



"At the current rate of erosion," Spencer says, 

 ". . . Fort Fisher as it is will not be available to 

 future generations." 



The erosion at Fort Fisher was actually caused 

 by a natural phenomenon; it wasn't man-induced, 

 says Spencer Rogers, Sea Grant's coastal engi- 

 neering specialist. 



The beach runs north-south. Originally, the fort 

 crossed the peninsula from the river to the ocean 

 and then went south in the shape of a figure 7 

 along the oceanfront. 



To the north of the fort, a rock outcropping, 

 rare in North Carolina, occurs just along the 

 shore. The outcropping has created a barrier for 

 sand moving from north to south. Sand has ac- 

 cumulated to the north of the outcropping, but 

 disappeared from the beach adjacent to Fort 

 Fisher. 



So far, most of the earthen mounds along the 

 oceanfront have disappeared, leaving only the 



section of the fort that crosses from the river to 

 the sea. 



To some, the battle plan is obvious: build a 

 seawall to protect the earthen mounds. 



In 1982 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers de- 

 signed a $7 million rock revetment, similar to a 

 seawall, to protect what remains of the historic 

 site. It would be about 3,050 feet long and would 

 be composed of a sloping pile of granite rocks. 



But there's a catch. 



In 1979, the state outlawed hardening of the 

 shoreline. That includes bulkheads, seawalls and 

 revetments. Although these structures sometimes 

 preserve the immediate property, they often rob 

 sand from the beaches on either side. And North 

 Carolina law aims at preserving beaches, not 

 structures. 



But Fort Fisher presents a kink in that strategy. 

 The law was written with provisions for variances 

 to be granted. 



So far, that hasn't happened. "No variance has 



MAP OF \ telegraph 

 ^ station 



FORT 

 FISHER 



Mound 

 Battery 



