Fort Screven

Fort Screven was named April 27, 1899 in honor of James Screven, Colonel and Brigadier General of Georgia Militia during the war of the Revolution, who was killed at Medway Church November 24, 1778.

Fort Screven, initially built to improve America's coastal defense system during the Spanish American war, remained an active military post until 1947. In 1947 the Fort was closed and sold to the town of Tybee.

In 1961, Battery Garland, the former gun battery and magazine for a twelve-inch long-range gun, became the Tybee Museum. Rooms which once stored six-hundred pound projectiles and two-hundred pound bags of gunpowder now hold the collections and exhibits of over four-hundred years of Tybee Island history.

This marker shows the location of the main fort area, however it is actually a district, with several large sections of the old concrete fortifications along the northern coast of the island. Many of these bits of land are privately owned and the fortifcations have been torn down or repurposed into decks for beach houses.

Formerly home to the Headquarters, Coast Defenses of Savannah from 1919 to 1924, the Headquarters, 8th Infantry Regiment from 1923 to 1929, the 1st and 2nd Companies, Coast Defenses of Savannah from 1919 to 1922, the 121st Coast Artillery Company from 1922 to 1924, the 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry from 1923 to 1940, and the 2nd Battalion, 70th Coast Artillery from 1940 to 1941.