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“The Largest Fort” wayside marker is at Stop Three on the driving tour on the northeast side of the intersection of Church Road and Flank Road. It is next to the ‘Grant’s Fifth Offensive‘ Orientation marker just outside the entrance to the fort.
From the marker:
The Largest Fort
Fort Fisher was the largest of the more than 30 forts that studded the Union siege lines. It included nearly 2,000 feet of parapet and could mount 19 guns.
The boom of a single gun in this fort on the morning of April 2, 1865, portended the fall of Petersburg. That solitary shot signaled the opening of the final Union assaults on the city.
“When the signal sounded the entire Corps, notwithstanding the orders to keep silent, sent up a mighty cheer and then dashed forward into the fog.”
– Lt. Col. Elisha H. Rhodes, 2nd R.I. April 2, 1865
“Fort Fisher in March 1865. This view shows the fort being expanded to its final size.”
The middle of the marker features a photograph of “The Union signal tower at Peebles Farm – a quarter mile behind you – [which] loomed over Fort Fisher.”
From the caption to the map:
Fort Fisher was one of several forts built to secure ground gained by the Union during the Battle of Peebles’s Farm in late September and early October 1864.
The marker is next to the “Grant’s Fifth Offensive” Orientation marker
This view looks north from the entyway to Union Fort Fisher. The extremely well-preserved earthworks look somewhat jumbled from ground level but can be seen as a precise geometric figure when viewed from the air. Two paths lead around the interior of the fort. The one on the left makes its way along the west side of the fort, across a footbridge partially visible in the center of the photo which crosses over a drainage ditch, and then to an observation platform on the northwest redan of the fort (photo below), which can be seen on the left of the distant earthworks.
This view looks south over the interior of Fort Fisher from the viewing platform built over the northwest redan of the fort. The entrance is the small notch in the earthworks to the right of the bridge in the upper center of the photo. (photo above). This was the largest fort in the Federal siege lines around Petersburg, with over a third of a mile of parapet and nineteen guns.