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Image courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.
Battery Meigs and Fort Wyllys
These forts, named for the Connecticut officers who commanded them in 1778, defended the southern approach to Fort Putnam, the largest of West Point’s forts. Shaped like a pentagon, Fort Wyllys’s walls were made of stone and piled dirt. Polish engineer Tadeusz Kosciuszko, who joined the Continental Army in 1776, helped to improve and expand these fortifications.