The two-mile dam was built by the Corps between 1874 and 1882.to close New Inlet which was opened by a particularly bad hurricane in 1761. As early as the 1850s, surveyors and engineers had determined that currents from New Inlet were silting in the Cape Fear River channel and in time would cause the port of Wilmington's closing.
However, during the Civil War, New Inlet proved to be the preferred entrance and exit of blockade-runners.
After the war, the U.S. government hastened to close it and put the father of famed architect Henry Bacon in charge of it He used his father's rock-laying technique developed at "The Rocks" to build up the foundation of his Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C..
--Old B-Runner
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