• Fort Washington

    Fort Washington

    Park Maryland

What Does Freedom Mean to You

The National Park Service, in partnership with the African American Experience Fund of the National Park Foundation, presents Expressions of Freedom.

There is but one way to commemorate the Emancipation Proclamation. That is to make its declarations of freedom real . . .

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., September 12, 1962

www.nps.gov/freedom

Did You Know?

The explosion aboard the USS Princeton in 1844 occured on the river near Fort Washington.

In 1844, President John Tyler was almost killed on the river near Fort Washington, when an experimental cannon exploded aboard the USS Princeton. Six were killed(including Secretary of State Abel Upshaw & Secretary of the Navy Thomas Gilmer) , 20 were injured. The accident prompted Thomas Jackson Rodman to develop a new way of casting artillery and the creation of the 15inch Rodman Gun, like the ones that can be seen at Fort Foote.