It seems hard to imagine that an attack on America’s Pacific Coast was ever a serious possibility, but the remains of the forts and coastal batteries at Fort Stevens State Park at the mouth of the Columbia River indicate that such was the case for much of the nation’s history. Whether the enemy might have been Confederate raiders, British dreadnoughts or Japanese warships, American military planners were determined to prevent them from sailing up the Columbia and making mischief. They only saw action once when a Japanese submarine shelled Battery Russell in June 1942, just a couple of weeks after the Battle of Midway, and the battery guns did not even return fire due to the submarine being out of range–doing so would only have revealed their position. So much for all that investment.
The fort was decommissioned in 1947. While this suggests that an enemy fleet steaming into Portland is no longer something to worry about, it unfortunately does not mean that our world has become a safer place.
