On Sunday’s ride, as usual I stopped briefly at the site of the Door Village fort that had been built during the Black Hawk war. Since the last time I was here a wooden sign had been added to complement the stone marker that had been erected in 1909. And it looks like the owners of the property have got into the spirit of things by placing a cannon near their front porch. I am not aware that the Michigan militiamen who stayed here on their way to Chicago had any cannons with them, but still, I thought it was a nice touch.
You have to take those fort restorations with a grain of salt. we have Fort D in Cape Girardeau, left over from the Civil War, where it was supposed to watch over the Mississippi River.
Turns out there is very little of the original fort left.
The soldiers supposedly built “Quaker cannons” our of logs to make themselves look more heavily armed.
It’s said that they never fired their real guns in anger.
Here’s one historian’s report of how dull it was:
Soldiers at Fort D, trying to occupy the long hours, ended up carving bowling pins and used one of their 32-pound solid-shot cannon balls as a bowling ball. According to House, one of the soldiers, Benjamin Radford, noted the bowling ball “gave strength to our arms.”
“You know you’re in the backwaters of the Civil War when you are using your cannon balls for bowling balls,” House said.