Built To Roam: Abandoned Forts and the End of Winter

It has been a long, long, annoyingly long, cold winter for everyone, even for people as far south as Georgia who's population went into chaos faster than on The Walking Dead. New England received what felt like 15 snow storms in the course of a week and Chicago is finally thawing from it's own personal Ice Age, but thankfully today marks the first day of spring and hopefully a fast return to normal sunny, beach going, BBQing, and hiking weather, hell if it's just 50 out for the next week I'm pretty sure most people will treat it as an 90 day at this point.
I was able to sneak in some hikes on the last few sunny weekend days we've gotten in the past month. This time taking a tour of some of New England's abandoned World War II forts, one in Rhode Island and one in New Hampshire.
During World War II, six coastal forts were designed and constructed in New England to act as a last line of defense for invading forces. These bases along with many other older, repurposed bases were shut down and the land they were on was given back to their respective states in the years following the conclusion of the war. Since then many of these sites have been turned into State Parks and hiking trails along with other facilities have been added. In the past few weeks I've visited two of these forts, Fort Dearborn in New Hampshire, and Fort Wetherill in Rhode Island. The parks offer hiking trails, but as you can expect, they are more for exploration rather than just strait hiking. Since both are along the coast there is plenty of oceanfront views and cliffs to check out, and both of these parks have fully accessible, open to the public abandoned forts to explore. Many of the original structures have been torn down and the ones that remain have been stripped of everything that could be removed, but there is a certain beauty in exploring old bunkers and underground hallways covered in graffiti that once were filled with soldiers and big ass bombs.

There are countless abandoned structures in New England and Urban Exploration can actually be pretty interesting, but most abandoned places are in no trespassing areas, which isn't always a deterrent but these forts are open to the public which makes it a much easier trip if you're into that sort of thing. Once again thanks for reading along. Cheers!

Panoranmic of one of the defense structures

Mileage: 5 Miles