Fort Defiance Park is at the confluence of the Maumee and Auglaize Rivers. The land area it
occupies is formed by the joining of the southern bank of the Maumee River with the western
bank of the Auglaize River. The entire area, river confluence and the adjacent bank area,
comprises what is historically known as the Grand Glaize, so named for the extensive mud flats
along both rivers at the confluence.
The park is presently an attractively tree-shaded area bounded on the north and east by the
Maumee and Auglaize Rivers respectively , on the west by the Defiance Public Library , and on
the south by a quiet residential area of late 19th and early 20th century private residences.
Within the park there are numerous tress , shrubs, interpretive markers, two Civil War era naval
guns, a lighted flagpole and the remnants of the original earthworks marked with a stone path
upon their crest.
General Arthur Wayne's Fort Defiance, built on this strategic piece of land, was constructed in
two phases between August 9, 1794 and September 14 1794. The first phase commenced immediately upon the army's arrival at the confluence and was completed in eight days. From accounts by
Wayne and other officers, it was a stockaded fort, with corner blockhouses. This phase of
construction was under the direction of Major Henry Burbeck.
The second phase of construction began upon the army's return from its victory over a large
force of Indians at Fallen Timbers (near present-day Maumee, Lucas County, Ohio). Wayne
suspected the Indians, along with a force of British regulars, would counterattack his force
at Fort Defiance. Accordingly, vaults were dug to make the fort bomb-proof (able to withstand
artillery fire) , and a ditch twelve feet wide and eight feet deep was dug and the earth
thrown against the walls.
Benjamin Van Cleve, a participant in the campaign, described the fort after Fallen Timbers in a
memoir to his son after the campaign, and published in the American Pioneer in 1842. The
description below, along with accompanying map, are from the Van Cleve memoir.
There is a rising ground on the opposite side of the Maumee River 250
yards from the fort which commands it. The fort commands every part
of the adjacent grounds else [sic].
Note-The small marks on the line numbered 9. on the plat of the works
are intended to represent diagonal pickets secured to a log wall , one
foot apart and are all round the works except on the side next the
Grand Glaize (Miami below the forks) . Those pickets are 4 feet long -
and extend in part over the ditch.
In 1812 General James Winchester found the fort in ruins and covering too small an area to be useful for his campaign against the British and Indians in the Second War for Independence(War of 1812). He build a larger fort, named Fort Winchester, to the south of "Wayne's fort." The latter has sometimes been mistakenly called Fort Defiance.
In 1888 Colonel Ol M. Poe, Corps of Engineers, surveyed the Fort Defiance Park as a part of a survey sponsored by the Federal Government of past military works. He found the earthworks, and most of the ditches still intact. The only encroachment was on the south edge of the southern blockhouse area where Front (now Fort) Street crossed it east to west, and some river erosion on the eastern and northern edges of the site.
Preservation of the site was due to its sttus as a park as early as 1835 when Defiance was platted and the fort site was donated to the Village as a public area. The oly changes between 1888 and the present time are
the addition of the markers , cannon, flagpole and concrete retaining
waLls of both of the river sides. These walls were built in 1936 to
stop the erosion along the edges of the site, noted by Poe. The walls
were built away from the bank and fill was placed in the space between
the natural banks and the wall, but to only about half of the bank's
height , thus creating a low walkway are on the fill and lower than the
ground level of the fort site. The present condition of the site is
stable. The park is maintained and policed by the City of Defiance as
a part of the City park system. -
NRHP Nomination Form