Battery Boutelle (San Francisco, California)

 artillery battery  Add category

"Beginning at the Golden Gate Bridge toll plaza and extending southward along the bluffs at the northwestern edge of the Presidio of San Francisco are five post-Endicott Board (1885) seacoast defense batteries. They include some of the earliest Endicott-type artillery defenses of San Francisco Bay. When begun, and for some time after completion, these batteries remained unnamed, and during construction were known simply by emplacement numbers assigned by the New York Board of Engineers in preparing the first Endicott-type plan for San Francisco Bay in 1890. The defenses of San Francisco were nationally second in priority, preceded only by those of New York Harbor. Sequentially the first five emplacements were to be five 10-inch guns mounted on the bluff above Fort Point. These were never built.

"Plans were forwarded to Washington in February 1898 for a battery of four 5-inch rapid fire guns on balanced pillar mounts just south of yet-unnamed Battery Marcus Miller. This was the site of two 1870s-vintage mortar batteries, whose three brick magazines would be useful for various purposes in the new battery. Construction of the two center emplacements was authorized March 8, 1898, and commenced quickly thereafter. A third emplacement was soon added, but the fourth never was. Three guns, all Model 1897, serial numbers 3, 15 and 17, were mounted by mid-1901, and the battery was transferred to the artillery on October 1, 1901. The gun mounts were numbers 13, 12 and 14, respectively, all manufactured by Bethlehem Steel. On October 9, 1902 the battery was named for Lieutenant Henry M. Boutelle, killed in action near Aliago, Philippine Islands, in 1899. The three guns were removed as obsolete in 1917."


Read more here: www.militarymuseum.org/BtyBoutelle.html