Visited 29 Aug 2009 - Fort McDowell is located on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay and is a part of Angel Island California State Park. Access is by ferry from either San Francisco or Tiburon. There is much to see on the Island and it pays to start early, for starters there are three Endicott period gun batteries (Wallace, Ledyard, Drew), Camp Reynolds (west garrison), Fort McDowell (east garrison), the Immigration Station (north garrison). Technically the whole island is Fort McDowell but the Park Service mostly uses geographic names not the garrison distinction.
Camp Reynolds Officer Quarters
You land at Ayala Cove from the ferry and there are several ways to do the Island. The motorized options are a tour tram or a Segway group tour. The tour tram goes completely around the island but made only one picture stop at the viewpoint above Battery Ledyard and the tour narrative was prerecorded. The Segway tour is also a group tour on Segways with a bit more flexibility but it is a group tour and you cannot spend time at each location, it is also expensive, $65 per person. You can also rent bicycles or walk. We chose to take the tram tour thinking that it would stop for pictures at all the batteries and the east and west garrisons but we were wrong about that. I had to walk back to see Battery Wallace and Camp Reynolds to get pictures. Time did not permit me to re-visit Battery Drew or the east garrison because we had to catch a specific ferry back. If I were to do it again I would walk the entire perimeter road and allow about 4 hours to do it.
Fort McDowell 600 Man Barracks
Camp Reynolds Parade Ground
Camp Reynolds was very interesting with some buildings that dated back to the 1860’s in a configuration that you would expect for an early western fort, parade ground centric. Fort McDowell, on the other hand, is clearly more modern and dominated by a huge 600 man concrete barracks and large complicated officer’s quarters circa the early 1900s.
Fort McDowell has the look of a modern ghost town while Camp Reynolds looks like it was just temporally boarded up for some reason in the 1860s. You could easily spend a whole day at each one and not see it all.
Fort McDowell, Battery Ledyard
The three Endicott Period gun batteries are in pretty good shape with limited graffiti. Battery Wallace and Battery Drew are single 8″ gun batteries, Drew had a Barbette carriage and Wallace had a disappearing carriage. Battery Ledyard housed two 5″ guns with Barbette carriages. The view from the perimeter road down on Battery Ledyard is great.
We had a great day for our visit and it was well worth the time and effort.
Posted under Batteries, Camps, Forts
This post was written by JohnStanton on September 4, 2009
