Fort Fisher Beach
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History
Until the last few months of the Civil War,
Ft. Fisher kept North Carolina's port of open to blockade runners supplying
necessary goods to Confederate armies inland. By 1865, the supply line through
Wilmington was the last remaining supply route open to Robert E. Lee's Army of
Northern Virginia. When Ft. Fisher fell after a massive Federal amphibious
assault on January 15, 1865, its defeat helped seal the fate of the Confederacy.
Visitors are invited to tour the remains of the fort's land face featuring an
impressive reconstruction of a 32-pounder seacoast gun at Shepherd's Battery.
Shaded by gnarled live oaks, a scenic trail leads tourists from the visitor
center past the gigantic earthworks and around to the rear of the fort. Guided
tours and wayside exhibits provide historical orientation. Other exhibits
include items recovered from sunken blockade runners.
Fort Fisher
embraced one mile of sea defense and one-third of a mile of land defense. More
than five hundred African Americans, both slave and free, worked with
Confederate soldiers on construction; occasionally as many as one thousand men
were working, although maintaining adequate labor was difficult. Fort Fisher was
made mostly of earth and sand, which was ideal for
absorbing the shock of heavy explosives. The sea face, equipped with 22 guns,
consisted of a series of 12-foot-high batteries bounded on the south end by two
larger batteries 45 and 60 feet high. Of the smaller mounds, one served as a
telegraph office and another was converted into a hospital bombproof.
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Tourist Attractions
Aquarium
MySpace Codes! The focus of the North
Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher is to educate the public about the waters of
the Cape Fear region. The Cape Fear Conservatory, the visitor’s first stop in
the aquarium, features freshwater life. In this large, tree-filled atrium,
streams, ponds and swamps are home to frogs, snakes, bass, catfish and perch.
Box turtles hide among the Conservatory’s groundcover.
American
alligators native to North Carolina occupy one of the larger exhibits in the
Conservatory. An albino alligator exhibit opened in 2009. In 2006, the aquarium
opened an exhibit featuring the venomous snakes of the region, including several
species of rattlesnake, copperheads and cottonmouths. The Coastal Waters
Gallery, which includes the Coquina Outcrop Touch Pool, provides hands-on
opportunities to learn about sea urchins, horseshoe crabs, whelk and other
creatures of a rocky outcrop surf zone. Masonboro Inlet Jetty features the
fishes common around a wave-washed rock jetty, an indoor salt marsh, a sea horse
habitat, and a loggerhead sea turtle display. The Open Oceans Gallery includes
Sharkstooth Ledge, which features fish common to offshore North Carolina, such
as pufferfish, hogfish and filefish. The gallery also displays octopus,
jellyfish and corals native to the state's waters. Holding 235,000 gallons, Cape
Fear Shoals is the largest of the aquarium’s saltwater exhibits. The
24-foot-deep replica of an offshore reef affords two-story, multi-level views of
large sharks, stingrays, groupers, and moray eels. The Exotic Aquatics Display
features animals native to Indo-Pacific ocean regions. These displays include
spiny lobsters, the red lionfish (Pterois volitans) and a North Carolina native,
the spotted scorpionfish. They are both known for their inconspicuous, venomous
spines. Lionfish are native to the Indian and Pacific Oceans, but in 2000 were
confirmed as having established themselves in North Carolina. The 550-gallon
Pacific Reef Display features living corals, giant clam and anemones,
cardinalfish, hawkfish, clownfish, wrasses, surgeonfish, and nearly a dozen
other fish species The North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher closed in November
1999 for a major expansion and reopened in March 2002. The new construction
increased the size of aquarium systems from 77,000 gallons to 455,000 gallons.
The expansion included the creation of the Cape Fear Shoals tank, a 235,000
gallon exhibit recreating the hard bottomed coral reefs off the coast of North
Carolina.
Dining
There are No resturants on fort fisher but there are
many on the neighboring kure beach such as:
- Freddie's Restaurante ( italian cuisine price range $9-$24)111 K Avenue,
Kure Beach, NC 28449
- Jack MacKerels Island Grill ( American) 113 K Ave, Kure Beach, NC 28449
- Old Pier House Restaurant (American) 101 K Ave, Kure Beach, NC
- Big Daddys (Seafood Price range: $10-25) 202 K Ave., Kure Beach, NC
- Outrigger Restaurant and Lounge (Seafood) 111 K Avenue, Kure Beach, NC
28449
This page was made by Dominque Jones on Sept. 9
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