Point Lookout Lighthouse

by Kathi Isserman

Title

Point Lookout Lighthouse

Artist

Kathi Isserman

Medium

Photograph - Protected By Pixsy

Description

Point Lookout Lighthouse can be accessed by water or land. This perspective was taken from the water. It is part of a Point Lookout State Park in Maryland.

"Point Lookout is a peninsula formed by the confluence of the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River. It attracted attention from the outset of English colonization in America. Captain John Smith explored the Point in 1612. In 1632 it was included in King Charles I's grant to George Calvert, Lord Baltimore. Calvert's younger son, Leonard, Maryland's first governor, claimed the Point for his personal manor in 1634. During the American Revolution, and again in the War of 1812, it was the subject of British raids, and served as an American lookout point for a watchman to convey, via post riders, news of British fleet activity in the lower bay.

In 1830 the federal government erected a lighthouse on the tip of the Point. This lighthouse, though modified, is still in existence though it is no longer active. In 1857, William Cost Johnson, a wealthy Marylander, bought much of the land on the Point to develop as a resort. The Civil War intervened to disrupt Johnson's plan and in 1862, following General George B. McClellan's unsuccessful campaign to capture Richmond, the federal government erected Hammond Hospital at the tip of the Point. The ward buildings radiated in spoke fashion from a central bay. Wounded and sick soldiers began pouring in for treatment.

Prisoners of Point Lookout
The following year, after the Battle of Gettysburg, Union authorities started sending Confederate prisoners to Point Lookout for incarceration. As the prisoner population swelled to 20,000 and more, a wooden walled prisoner pen was constructed on the bay shore. The rebel captives were held inside and were given only tents for shelter. Exposure, disease, and starvation took their toll. Of the 50,000 men held at the Point between 1863 and 1865, nearly 4,000 died. Ironically, however, this death rate of 8 percent was less than half the death rate among soldiers who were in the field with their own armies."

Uploaded

September 13th, 2022

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