One of the last Confederate strongholds has provided plenty to learn about history in the Wilmington area during the Civil War.
By the late 1970s, the excavation of a bombproof room was another discovery at Fort Fisher.
According to a story in the Nov. 10, 1978, edition of the Wilmington Morning Star, state archaeologists finished an eight-year project to find the room. While it didn’t provide a wealth of new information, it did show “historically accurate blueprints of some of the many rooms and tunnels which have lain almost forgotten in the Fort Fisher ruins since the Civil War.”
As for artifacts, “other than several military and underwear buttons and a few unfired miniballs, the only secret the buried room held was its construction.”
Officials at the time said the excavation “will serve as a model for the rebuilding of a part of the sand fort which was leveled during World War II to build an airstrip.”
Fort Fisher, which protected the port of Wilmington, was the last southern port to fall during the Civil War. The opening of the new Fort Fisher Visitor Center , originally set for Sept. 27, has been postponed due to impacts from Possible Tropical Cyclone 8.