The visitor education center at Liberty Square in downtown Charleston. NPS.
Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park — Fort Sumter National Monument until 2019 — lies in and around Charleston Harbor, Charleston County, South Carolina.
- Authorized: April 28, 1948.
- Size: about 95 hectares (235 acres).
- What it preserves: the sites of Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie, and 171 years of American coastal defense, from the American Revolution to World War II.
- Why it matters: the first shots of the Civil War were fired here. As a strategic site and a symbol of secession, Fort Sumter was one of the war's most heavily bombarded places and was reduced to ruins.
The park has four separate areas:
| Area | Where |
|---|---|
| Fort Sumter | an island fort at the harbor entrance |
| Fort Moultrie | on Sullivan's Island, 1.6 km (1.0 mi) northeast of the entrance |
| U.S. Coast Guard Historic District | Sullivan's Island, 1.3 km (0.8 mi) east of Fort Moultrie |
| Liberty Square | the visitor education center and tour boat dock |
Geologic setting
The park sits on the Atlantic Coastal Plain, in its Sea Island Section: flat country of gently sloping marine terraces built as sea level rose and fell from the Pleistocene to today. Coastal Plain rocks, of Late Cretaceous and Cenozoic age, generally get lower and younger toward the ocean.
| Site | Underlain by |
|---|---|
| Fort Sumter | an artificial island on a foundation of granite, cement and shells of unknown local source |
| Fort Moultrie and the Coast Guard district | artificial fill over Quaternary beach, barrier-island and estuarine deposits |
| Liberty Square | artificial fill |
Overall the park rests on Quaternary beach and barrier-island sands and Holocene artificial fill.
Masonry ruins at Fort Sumter. NPS.
Inventories
- Geologic Resources Inventory (GRI): digital geologic maps and reports for more than 270 natural resource parks. Its products — scoping summaries, GIS maps, reports and posters — are listed on the NPS DataStore.
- Soil Resources Inventory: completed for this park and on the DataStore.
This page is part of the NPS Geodiversity Atlas, which describes each park's rocks, minerals, sediments, fossils, landforms, soils and the processes that shape them, in support of education, geoconservation and managing living and non-living resources together.
More: Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie · beaches and coastal landforms · geologic time · regional geology · South Carolina Geological Survey
Sources
Based on "NPS Geodiversity Atlas—Fort Sumter & Fort Moultrie National Historical Park, South Carolina," National Park Service, citing National Park Service (2016), Willoughby and others (2005), Barnes (1952), Weems and Lemon (1993) and Campbell and others (1996); a work of the United States government in the public domain.
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from www.nps.gov
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