The Decades of fort derussy 1901-1910

Over the course of the next few months, we are going to dive into the past of the US Army Museum of Hawaii’s home, Fort DeRussy. From defending Hawaii’s coast and harbors to offering recreation for locals and military members, the Fort has been home to several military missions over the last 125 years.

1901-1910

The portrait of General Rene DeRussy is an oil on canvas by Waldo Samuel Lovett. In 1909, the KMR was redesignated Fort DeRussy in honor of Brevet General Reńe Edward DeRussy – a veteran of the War of 1812 and American Civil War.

In the aftermath of America’s annex of the Hawaiian Islands, the U.S. Government began acquiring land to take advantage of the Island’s strategic potential. The 1901 purchase of three acres of land in Waikiki, was the first step towards building what would eventually become Fort DeRussy.

Initially known as the Kalia Military Reservation, the lands were earmarked for coastal and harbor defense. Coastal defense, an already common fortification system along mainland waterfronts, soon followed America’s imperial wake. Following the 1905 recommendations of Secretary of War William Howard Taft, construction of new coastal artillery batteries began in order to protect America’s “insular possessions” in the Philippines, Panama, and Hawai’i. Taft proposed placing 14-inch and 6-inch guns to defend Honolulu and Pearl Harbor from amphibious attack.

The first troops to garrison KMR, were members of the 1st Battalion of Engineers sent to survey the acreage. And by late 1908, they broke ground for the future fortifications. A frenzy of construction followed as the US Army began garrisoning Fort DeRussy.

(USAMH 1653 and USAMH 1654) The steel reinforced concrete piles mentioned in Anne Goodwin Winslow’s letter being driven into the ground during initial framing of Battery Randolph.

The wife of Major Eveleth Winslow, U.S. Corps of Engineers, wrote of the slow turn from natural oasis to military fort in 1910.

March 3, 1910 – “It is a shame that anything, but peace and verdure should ever have entered such a spot, but the peace has vanished and whole hills of concrete are fast taking the place of grass and shrubs and trees. The gun blocks look like great frosted cakes (to a giant, as the chickies would say), and the concrete piles, lying in hundreds on the ground, look like mammoth sticks of candy. They are forty feet long and beautifully molded, and it seems still wonderful to me that they can drive them in the ground without breaking them. Night and day they are pounding away, and we are so used to the noise and the trembling of the earth we seldom notice it, except when we have visitors who shrink and turn pale.”

The Winslow’s were some of the first Army dependents able to live on Fort DeRussy’s footprint. Below is Major Winslow’s residence including a guesthouse on the right. The following decade would bring more construction in the form of fortifications, housing and barracks, schools, and command buildings.  

USAMH 2870

U.S. Army Museum of Hawaii (USAMH) photo numbers listed to identify the pictures.