From 1876 to 1898, Fort Sumter stood largely neglected, important mainly as a lighthouse station. Ungarrisoned, most of that time it was in the charge of a “fortkeeper” or an ordnance sergeant. Without proper funds for maintenance, Fort Sumter, even then visited by thousands each year, fell into a state of dilapidation. By 1887 the wooden platforms of the barbette guns had rotted away so that “not one gun could be safely fired”; the neat earth slopes had eroded into “irregular mounds”; and quantities of sand had drifted into the parade ground. The casemate guns rusted so that they could not be traversed; salt water dashed freely through the open embrasures, the shutters of which were no longer in working order. The Spanish-American War, 1898, prompted the construction in 1899 of a battery of two long-range rifled cannon at Fort Sumter. The massive concrete emplacement for this battery (named for Isaac Huger, South Carolinian, general in the American Revolution) dominates the central portion of Fort Sumter today. The guns, long since outmoded, were removed about 1941. During World War II, Fort Sumter was armed with 90-mm. antiaircraft guns manned by a garrison of Coast Artillery. _Guide to the Area_ The following guide should be used with the map on pages 22 and 23. Numbers on the map correspond to the numbers in the text below. [Illustration: One of the 12-inch guns of Battery Huger, as mounted in 1901.] 1. LEFT-FLANK EXTERIOR. Entrance to Fort Sumter is by way of a modern sally port built through the center of the fort’s left flank. This sally port, erected after the Civil War, replaced a gun embrasure. The two 13-inch mortars mounted outside this entry serve as the visitor’s introduction to the ordnance now located at Fort Sumter. In 1863-65 Federal troops on Morris Island used this type of mortar against the fort. A marker on the left flank near the sally port honors the Confederate defenders of Fort Sumter.