San Deigo Historic Site 54 FORT STOCKTON

This redoubt, located at the summit of a knoll in Presidio Park, dates from Mexican times, when San Diegans threw up earthworks as a defense against northern forces in 1838.

In 1846 San Diego was seized for the United States by sailors and marines from the sloop-of-war Cyane, supported by Fremont's California Battalion. The fort was strengthened and re-named Fort Dupont, in honor of the captain of the Cyane.

When the Cyaneand Fremont left, Mexican volunteers retook the town and drove the remaining Americans to take shelter on the Bay in the Yankee whaler Stonington. A young New Yorker named Albert B. Smith went ashore alone and spiked the guns in the fort. Then the town and the hill were retaken.Commodore Stockton saw to the further improvement of the strong point and renamed it for himself. At its best it was a broad ditch backed by earth-filled barrels, between which the muzzles of twelve Spanish guns looked out.

This was the point where the march of the Mormon Battalion from Council Bluffs ended in 1847. After the longest march of infantry in history, theMormons arrived in California too late to take part in the fighting.

A bronze cannon named El Jupiter, cast in Manila in 1783, is mounted in the ruins now. In Fort Guijarros on Ballast Point in Spanish and Mexican times, it was part of San Diego's earliest harbor defenses.Fort Stockton may be easily located by the tall flag pole at its center.