Today I am up very early in preparation for a hike I am leading for Sierra Club. The sun is yet to rise. In fact it is not dawn yet. My Sierra Club Outings colleague Russ and I plan to take people on a tour of some of the civil war fort sites in the northern part of Washington, DC. During the civil war 68 forts were built in a ring around the District of Columbia which at that time was a small town of about 75,000 people comprising mainly of the Capitol, the White House and the areas around them. A 37-mile long circle of defenses consisting of forts with large cannons bolstered by rifle pits and gun batteries in between them was built. Many trees were cut down to clear the view from the forts. At that time Washington, DC was mostly farms, plantations and woodlands. Now the farms are gone and many of the areas that were denuded are now forested. At the same time the population has grown to about 600,000 and there are a lot more houses and streets now that didn’t exist in those times.
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