Over a century ago, soldiers in the US Army Coast Artillery Corps marched on it when they weren't manning huge guns to defend Puget Sound. In World War II, it was covered with antennas aimed at Imperial Japan so Navy radio operators could listen in on top-secret radio transmissions.
In the 1960s, it was the center of a tight-knit community, and the site of picnics and pickup football games.
But by the mid '90s, the little Parade Ground at Fort Ward on Bainbridge Island was in danger of being paved over and turned into a housing development.
Then in 1999, Kitsap County Consolidated Housing Authority joined the community effort to save the only National Historic Site on the island.
"It's always been the center of our entire community, and we were going to lose it and all that history forever if we didn't do something fast to preserve it," says Eileen Safford, president of the Fort Ward Neighborhood Association. "But we knew it wouldn't be easy."
Fort Ward's baseball team playing a game on the Parade Ground almost a century ago.
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