Legends are fun, but at Carlisle Barracks they’re digging for proof (2024)

CARLISLE - There’s always been a lot of lore and legend surrounding the Hessian Powder Magazine at Carlisle Barracks, most of it centered on questions like did Hessian prisoners-of-war build it, were they detained there, or both.

But if we’re being honest, there was also one other lingering, more fundamental question:

Was that old stone building on the Barracks really the site of the powder magazine that primary source documents - including a letter from then-Gen. George Washington detailing exactly what he wanted - have already settled was in fact built at Carlisle in 1777?

Lots of other things matched, like the building’s dimensions, its stone exterior / brick interior walls, and the vaulted ceiling.

It was also located right in the middle of the oldest part of the Carlisle post.

But powder magazines and workshops of that time typically had these telltale buttresses stationed along the thick limestone walls, intended to preserve the basic structure in the case of an unplanned explosion that, unfortunate experience had taught, had levelled other such sites.

No one alive now had ever seen any physical evidence that long-accepted Carlisle site never did.

Until now.

Over the last 10 days, a team of archeologists from Juniata College located the long-covered foundations of no less than seven stone buttresses (an eighth is believed to be hiding under a concrete sidewalk) that will, for all intents and purposes, answer that foundational - pun intended - question.

“This was a powder magazine. I think that’s without question after finding those,” said Jack Leighow, a curator for the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, the arm of the U.S. Army War College that has operational control of the building.

The discovery, in turn, now opens up exploration for a number of other questions to be explored, including one about bragging rights: Is the powder magazine at Carlisle Barracks in fact the oldest building that was commissioned and used by what would become the U.S. Army?

(There are other, older buildings that were inherited and used by the Army.)

It’s definitely in the running, Rebecca Cybularz, an historical architect with the U.S. National Park Service who’s been assigned to the powder magazine project, said Monday.

Leighow said this year’s dig was triggered by a 2022 conversation he was having with his director at AHEC.

“He said: ‘You know, there are a lot of questions about this building. Some people don’t think it was a powder magazine. Some people think it’s newer.’” Leighow recalled. “He said: ‘How can we get to the bottom of this?’”

That was the origin of the historic structure report for which field work has begun this spring, starting with a ground-penetrating radar survey around the building’s exterior in April for anomalies that could hold clues to its past.

That survey work gave Jonathan Burns, director of the Cultural Resource Institute at Juniata and his team of student assistants a good road map to work with. Over the last 10 days, Burns and his crew unearthed limestone foundations of the buttresses going all the way down to bedrock.

“That was the discovery from this project,” Burns said.

Don’t confuse these with the flying buttresses on some ornate European cathedral. These were far more utilitarian, stone columns intended to help the other stones stay in place, Leighow said.

“These buttresses supported the walls of the building so that in the event of an explosion the vaulted brick ceiling inside would go up, but the walls would stay intact so they wouldn’t have to rebuild them,” Leighow said.

Burns think the buttresses were taken down sometime prior to the Civil War, in part because of another artifact found this week: a military uniform button found that dates to about 1840. Burns’ working theory is that’s when the Army converted the magazine to other uses.

Nineteenth Century photos show that after the buttresses were removed, the Army actually added a porch to the building for a time. At other points, it served as the main entrance into the installation, and a detention center.

From 1948 on, the powder magazine building has been used as a museum, telling the story of Carlisle Barracks.

The final historic structure report won’t be completed until next year, but, spoiler alert, the historians think they have their first answer, and they’re mighty proud of it given the importance that these magazines would have had to the fledgling Army.

“This was a massive operation here at Carlisle,” Leighow said. “This and Springfield and Philadelphia were basically the arsenals for the Continental Army... That’s why it’s important to preserve and commemorate that.

“You might say why Carlisle?” Leighow added. “It was far enough from the coast that it was considered to be fairly safe from British takeover, as had happened in Philadelphia.”

Cybularz said the historic structure report, projected for completion in about 18 months, will include recommendations for the powder magazines future preservation and uses.

It may also give some more definition to the building’s interplay with the Hessians, professional troops hired by King George III to help prosecute the war in America. It is already clear from the records that scores of Hessian prisoners captured at the Battle of Trenton were held for a time at Carlisle Barracks.

The U.S. Army War College, the lead tenant at Carlisle Barracks, already has what it needs to celebrate the new findings.

War College spokesman Brian Fickel said Monday plans are already being laid for a celebration in tandem with the Army’s 250th birthday next June that will include a panel discussion on the building’s importance to the fight for independence, reenactors and a video about this spring’s work.