The Story Behind Some of TV’s Most Haunting Ruins

One of Bernard’s first actions was to survey the Mississippi Delta, including the Chef Menteur Pass, which connects Lake Borgne to Lake Pontchartrain. He created a new design for the site of a small earthwork battery that had been built during the Battle of New Orleans, as well as for a number of other locations in southeastern Louisiana, including Fort Pike along the Rigolets and Fort Jackson along the Mississippi River, near the older Fort St. Philip. Fort Macomb and Fort Pike share in common an unusual curving front wall that created a wide target range for cannons set inside barrel-vaulted casemates.

Fort Macomb, known as Fort Wood until 1851, was completed at cost of more than $350,000, and was finally garrisoned in 1828. Confederate troops occupied it at the beginning of the Civil War but abandoned the post when the Union captured New Orleans in April 1862. A month later, Union Lt. Col. O. W. Lull took command of the fort, and wrote a letter to Gen. Benjamin Butler that included a list of supplies and a hand-drawn map. The fort’s tenants during the Civil War included the First Louisiana Native Guard, which was among the Union Army’s first all-black units.

The fort never engaged in battle, and suffered a fire to its barracks in 1867 that contributed to its decommissioning and abandonment four years later. By then, improved weaponry had rendered the Third System masonry forts largely obsolete. Hurricanes have battered Fort Macomb over the years, and nearly a century-and-a-half of neglect has left it overrun by nature and susceptible to vandalism. Its vine-tangled ruins have attracted photographers for decades and filmmakers more recently. Though it was named to the National Register of Historic Places four decades ago, in 1978, it is closed to the public today.