Digging Up the Fayetteville Arsenal Site

From the July 28, 2019, Fayetteville (NC) Observer "Archaeology  unearth Fayetteville history at Arsenal Park" by Paul Woolverton.

And the public can watch it as it happens.  Some of the items recovered from the site of the old Fayettevillesenal are a smoking pipe, melted glass, various nails, screws, lots of brick, mortar and sandstone.

The Arsenal Park is now part of the Museum of Cape Fear History complex and eventually the North Carolina Civil War and Reconstruction History center will be built on the site which is why the archaeologists are excavating.

The Fayetteville Arsenal was built in the mid-1800s by the U.S. government to make weapons.  Confederates took control in 1861 and constantly expanded the works and made rifles and other weapons of war.  When William Sherman's army marched through in 1865, he had everything at the site knocked down and then set the ruins on fire.

--Old Secesh