50 States of Wonder
8 Historic Military Relics in Maryland

Put your codebreaking skills to the test at the National Cryptologic Museum in Fort Meade, the intelligence community’s only public museum. Dedicated to America's cryptology history and legacy, the museum features an incomparable library of declassified books on cryptology as well as exhibits dedicated to women and Black Americans who made significant contributions to the field. (Read more.)  

This pre-Industrial Age iron furnace belonged to Thomas Johnson, the future first governor of Maryland. It was fully functional by 1776—just in time to produce cannons and cannonballs for George Washington’s troops in the Revolutionary War. At the furnace, labor from blacksmithing to forging was largely performed by enslaved people. The flurry of activity spurred the development of a nearby village. If you visit, keep your eyes peeled for another stack, named “Isabella,” which was in blast from 1857 to 1893. (Read more.) 

Fort Frederick stood through three wars, but it's unique for never having been attacked during its history. It was built by the British at the start of the 18th-century French and Indian War, though it never fired a shot. Then came the Revolutionary War, during which the fort was used to imprison British soldiers after the Battles of Saratoga and Yorktown. Finally, during the Civil War, the fort was home to Union Troops guarding the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. (Read more.)

Up until the Civil War, this tiny fort was the only defensive fortification in the area. The fort saw action during the War of 1812, when it was shelled by Royal Navy warships. The structure was blown up by its own commander while he and his men beat a hasty retreat. The French-American military engineer Pierre L'Enfant, who eventually designed the plan for Washington, D.C., was commissioned to rebuild the fort—but this was a short-lived agreement. L'Enfant was relieved of his duties within a few months. (Read more.) 

Tramp through the woods along the Potomac River, six miles south of Washington, D.C., to find a pair of monumental coastal artillery guns concealed among the leafy trees. These twin Rodman Guns date to the Civil War, and were meant to protect the river approach to Washington. Powered by 40-pound explosive charges, these hulking guns could fire 500-pound solid cannonballs. They were never actually fired in anger. (Read more.)

This abandoned relic of the Cold War is hidden in plain sight. The Nike missile battery W-92 is one of a slew of missile sites that were installed to defend Baltimore and Washington, D.C. against the threat of  Soviet bombers from 1955 to 1974. Here at Gaithersburg, the station follows a fairly typical layout: a missile assembly building, a kennel for a guard dog, and three hulking missile silos. As of May 2020, the site has been put up for sale. (Read more.) 

This is not an ordinary golf course. Inspect its past to uncover the roots of the Central Intelligence Agency, and an explosive history of wartime espionage. See those green lawns? For $4,000 a month in 1943, those grassy areas transformed into a garden of war, with agents testing explosives in the sandtraps and conducting live-fire exercises on the fairways. (Read more.) 

Built in the late 1840s and commissioned by Robert E. Lee, Fort Carroll was meant to defend Baltimore from naval attacks. The hexagonal fort was reinforced during the Spanish-American War, but the weaponry was never actually used and fell into irrelevance by the time World War I began. Today, the fort is less a military installation and more an accidental sanctuary for birds, including seagulls, cormorants, and egrets. (Read more.)