Fort Miamis National Historic Site

Fort Miamis

In 1794 the British built Fort Miamis to block Gen. Anthony Wayne's advance on Detroit and to encourage the Ohio Indians in their resistance to U.S. penetration north and west of the Ohio River. The fort was a log stockade, which had four bastions, each capable of mounting four cannon, a river battery, barracks, officers' quarters, supply buildings, and various shops. A defensive ditch, 20 to 25 feet deep, ran along the land side of the fort.

Late in 1794 General Wayne and his troops marched northward toward Fort Miami from Fort Greenville. Just south of the fort, ambushed by the Indians and a small party of Canadian militia, he ordered a charge and dispersed his adversaries, in the Battle of Fallen Timbers. The Indians fled to Fort Miami, but the commander of the fort shut them out. Beaten and disillusioned, the Indians dispersed and 1 year later their chiefs gathered at Fort Greenville to negotiate with Wayne. The Treaty of Greenville opened most of the present State of Ohio and part of present Indiana to white settlement. In 1796, under the terms of Jay's Treaty (1794), the British abandoned Fort Miami. Wayne occupied and garrisoned it, but about 1799 U.S. troops abandoned it. During the War of 1812 Tecumseh, the Shawnee chief, and British officials maintained headquarters at the fort, from where they moved against Gen. William Henry Harrison at Fort Meigs.

In 1942 several Ohio civic and patriotic organizations acquired a part of the site of the old fort. Nothing remained of the original structure except parts of the earthworks. In 1953 the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society conducted preliminary excavations, and in 1957 the Historical Society of Northwestern Ohio placed a marker at the site, which remains undeveloped.

On December 9, 1999, Public Law 106-164, entitled the "Fallen Timbers Battlefield and Fort Miamis National Historic Site Act of 1999," was enacted in order to establish this site as an affiliated area of the national park system.

Purposes of the National Historic Site are 1) to recognize and preserve the 185-acre Fallen Timbers Battlefield site, 2) to recognize and preserve the Fort Miamis site, 3) to formalize the linkage of the Fallen Timbers Battlefield and Monument to Fort Miamis, and 4) to preserve and interpret United States military history and Native American culture during the period from 1794-1813.