Fort Totten Park

Fort Totten Park is a park in Fort Totten a neighborhood of Washington, D.C., administered by the National Park Service.

History
Fort Totten was a Union Army defensive earthwork during the Civil War. It was named for Joseph Totten.

Fort Totten was completed during the Autumn of 1861, as part of the Civil War Defenses of Washington, also known as the Fort Circle. The fort had a perimeter of 272 yards, and places for 20 guns, including one 100 pound Parrott rifle.

Fort Totten was one in a chain of fortifications directly protecting the northern approaches of Washington, D.C. Fort Totten was built to provide support to Fort Stevens and Fort Bunker Hill. It protected the Old Soldiers Home, and the Summer White House.

Wartime garrisons were manned by the 76th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 2nd Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery Regiment, and 136th and 137th Pennsylvania regiment.

The Fort Parks and Fort Drive
Fort Totten had a prominent place in 50s-60s-era plans for Fort Drive, a plan originally conceived in the first decades of the twentieth century to connect D.C.'s civil war defenses with a ring-shaped parkway ("not just widened streets"). The National Park Service and the District of Columbia signed a memorandum of agreement, on October 24, 1944, for the development of two Fort Drive sections.

On October 1, 1964, the National Capital Planning Commission staff and other professionals took a bus tour to help decide whether it should "be developed as a park-like road, can it lend itself to be an intermediate loop, or should the forts remain isolated for just recreational use?" By May 1965, the local newspapers extolled a new proposal by Fred Tuemmler as a substitute for the Fort Drive. Tuemmler, whom the National Capital Planning Commission hired to re-evaluate Fort Drive, suggested the right-of-way land should "be reconstituted as a recreational facility" and, to emphasize that park recreation concept, rename it "Fort Park System." It would be "a place to get away from cars." Further, he saw it as a 30 mi "ring of recreation and green space" around the city, running from Fort Greble Park to Battery Kemble Park, with hiking and bicycle paths.