Fort Powhatan
former river defense fort near Garysville, Virginia
Fort Powhatan is a former river defense fort located at Windmill Hill (also called Hood's Bluff) near Garysville, Virginia, 2.5 miles (4.0 km) southeast of Flowerdew Hundred Plantation in Prince George County, Virginia. The fort was named for the area's Powhatan tribe of indigenous people; the name is also an English term for their leader. It is on the south bank of the James River, sited to prevent enemy vessels proceeding upriver to Richmond. The first fort on the site was a two-gun battery called Hood's Battery, built in 1779 during the American Revolutionary War and named after the owner of the plantation it was on. In January 1781, British forces under Benedict Arnold attacked and dismantled the battery and went on to burn Richmond. Later that year a larger fort was built, named Fort Hood (or Fort at Hood's Bluff). In 1808 this was replaced by the federal government with Fort Powhatan, part of what was later called the second system of US fortifications. The fort was not attacked in the War of 1812. In 1862, during the American Civil War, Confederate forces added a new earthwork battery on the site; the fort area was abandoned by Confederates, and subsequently captured by Union forces in July 1863. The fort was abandoned at the end of the war in 1865.
“Fort Powhatan” enters the record as former river defense fort near Garysville, Virginia. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Fort, Powhatan and former can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q65065698. Authority coordinates are 37.270, -77.078. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1779, 1781, 1808 and 1812.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fort Powhatan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.