Fort King George - Darien, GA
N 31° 21.879 W 081° 24.998
17R E 460377 N 3470090
Fort King George was built in 1721. It is located at 1600 Wayne St in Darien, GA.
Waymark Code: WM55QN
Location: Georgia, United States
Date Posted: 11/15/2008
Views: 9
L. on this second road, at Lower Bluff, to the site of Fort King George (R), 0.5 m., easily identified by the pits and refuse mounds of an old sawmill and by several large live oaks. Nothing remains of the twenty-foot-square, gabled blockhouse, erected in 1721 to protect the colonies from the encroachments of the French and Spanish. Garrisoned by His Majesty's Independent Company, this was the first English settlement on Georgia land. Fire almost destroyed the fort in 1727; although it was rebuilt, the pleading of South Carolina caused the removal of the troops to that colony. Upon Lower Bluff the Scottish founders of Darien landed in 1736 and built their first houses and church. In 1938 the legislature purchased the site for a state park.
---Georgia, a Guide to its Towns and Countryside, 1940
Today the site is still a state park. The fort has been rebuilt as a history museum.
The historical marker reads:
"Site of old Fort King George, built in 1721 by Col. John Barnwell, of South Carolina, under British Royal orders. This tiny cypress blockhouse, 26 feet square, with 3 floors, and a lookout in the gable from which the guard could watch over the Inland Waterway and St. Simon's Island, was flanked by officers quarters and barracks, and the entire area was surrounded on all but the river side by a moat and palisades. Garrisoned by his Majesty's Independent Company, with replacements of Colony scouts, the fort was occupied for six years. During that time more than 140 officers and soldiers lost their lives here and were buried on the adjacent bluff. The first of the British 18th century scheme of posts built to counteract French expansion in America, Fort King George was also a flagrant trespass upon Spanish territory, and during its occupation Spain continually demanded that it be destroyed.
The troops were withdrawn to Port Royal in 1727, but until Oglethorpe arrived in Savannah in 1733 South Carolina kept two lookouts at old Fort King George."