Archeologists are resuming the quest to find the lost Fort Casimir in Historic New Castle.
Fort Casimir was originally built by Dutch settlers on the shore of the Delaware River in New Castle in 1651.
According to local historians, it changed hands several times and was likely knocked down about twenty years after being built.
Work began Monday to search for the fort at a site previous archaeological studies indicate it once stood.
Steven De Vore with the National Park Service is teaching the class conducting the initial non-invasive surveying of the area— which should reveal abnormalities beneath the surface.
“We’ve got a variety of magnetometers, gradiometers that detect magnetic changes in the soil, we’ve got a resistance meter, we’ve got three radar units of different kinds — conductivity magnetic susceptibility meters,” he said. “We’re looking at several different kinds of properties.”
Daniel Citron, executive director of the New Castle Historical Society, says the last investigation of the area was in 2012, when archaeologists found what they believed to be part of a palisade wall.
“Hopefully we’ll go beyond just finding one part of one wall and we’ll actually figure out where exactly the fort is,” he said. “And from there we can then gauge the whole battlefield when the English defeated the Dutch and took over the colony.”
Citron says Fort Casimir, which was eventually captured by the English, is significant not only to New Castle history, but to state history.
“The location of this fort and the way it ended up changing hands is what ended up leading Delaware to being separate from Pennsylvania,” he said.
Citron says archaeologists will dig test pits at the site this summer to follow up on the results of this week’s survey. A final report could be presented next spring.
The New Castle Historical Society is leading the Fort Casimir Battlefield Archaeological Project with a grant from the American Battlefield Protection Program.
