Fort Negley

Welcome to Nashville Sites and our tour of Fort Negley. This tour begins at the Visitors Center. From traffic congestion to new condos to construction cranes— Nashville’s growth and development is on full display. And yet, on a twenty-one acre hill that provides one of the best unobstructed views of the downtown skyline, Fort Negley is a place where time stands still. Today, Fort Negley is a peaceful park, but in the 1860s, it was the backbone of the Union Army’s defense system during the Civil War. It housed thousands of soldiers and just as many enslaved laborers between August 1862, when construction commenced, and 1865, when the war ended. But Fort Negley’s story didn’t stop with the end of war. It continues to the present day. The last federal troops departed Nashville and the fort in 1867.

Over the next sixty years, the fort fell into disrepair and was even used as a meeting place for the Ku Klux Klan. In the 1930s, the fort was rebuilt as part of the New Deal Works Progress Administration (WPA) and remained open to the public until after World War II. In 1975, Ft. Negley was listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and it was then that public and city officials began to recognize the site’s significance. Over the next thirty years Ft. Negley would be evaluated by city officials through master and interpretive plans, archaeological investigations, and the rehabilitation of several areas of the fort. This culminated with the construction of a visitors center and the park’s reopening in 2004.

In May 2019, Ft. Negley was designated as a UNESCO Site of Memory—one of only five in the United States. This remarkable honor places Ft. Negley alongside the Statue of Liberty, Independence Hall, University of Virginia, and Monticello. As we peel back the many layers of Fort Negley’s history, you will learn about war and peace, slavery and segregation, and the role of this important site in Nashville’s history.

I’m Gary Burke. My great-great grandfather, Peter Bailey, was stationed here at Fort Negley in 1864 and 1865 with Company K, the 17th Regiment of the of the United States Colored Troops (USCT). Join me on this tour as we travel through time and explore the multi-layered and complex histories of St. Cloud Hill. This tour builds on the work of the Fort Negley Descendants Project at Vanderbilt University—a digital archive of interviews with the descendants of the African-American laborers and soldiers who worked at Fort Negley. Today, I’ll share my own experiences, and we’ll also hear from Dr. Eleanor Fleming whose two ancestors, Ruffin and Egbert Bright, helped to build the fort. Walk towards the mailboxes for your first stop.