On Sunday, September 13, 2026, the Old Fort in Fort Wayne will throw open its gates for "Be a Tourist in Your Own Hometown," a free afternoon when history comes alive in the shadow of the city's skyline. From noon until five, visitors can wander the reconstructed stockade, meet soldiers and civilians in period dress, watch demonstrations, and sample the fruits of a frontier bake sale. It is, in many ways, a single stop on a much larger civic ritual — a day when Fort Wayne invites its own residents to see their city through the eyes of a visitor. But the fort itself carries a story that reaches back more than two centuries, to the very founding of the place that bears its name.
The Old Fort is a faithful copy of the post built by American troops under the command of Major John Whistler in 1815 — the third and last American fort to stand at the confluence of the St. Joseph, St. Mary's, and Maumee rivers. That spot, where three waterways meet at the edge of modern downtown, was strategic almost beyond measure. The rivers allowed travelers to carry goods and canoes a short distance from the St. Mary's to the Little River, which flows into the Wabash, a tributary of the Ohio and Mississippi. The result was a nearly unbroken water route from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico — a fact not lost on the French, who were the first Europeans to settle the region in the late 1600s and who built a trading post near the Miami village of Kekionga to tap a fur trade that shipped tens of thousands of beaver pelts to Europe each year.
The French built Fort Miami in 1722, the first of five forts in the area, only to see it captured and burned by the Miami. A second Fort Miami rose in 1750 and passed from French to British hands before being taken by the Miami during Pontiac's uprising. For decades afterward, no garrison stood at the three rivers. That changed in 1793, when the young United States sent General Anthony Wayne to subdue Native American resistance on the Northwest frontier. After his victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, Wayne built a permanent fort at Kekionga, completed on October 20, 1794, and named it in his honor. It was the first of three American forts in what is now downtown Fort Wayne.
The second came in 1800, when Colonel Thomas Hunt, finding Wayne's original fort in poor condition, erected a new one about three hundred feet away, closer to the rivers, on the site where the Fort Wayne Fire Department Station #1 stands today. That fort survived a sustained siege during the War of 1812 and held the frontier against the British. The third and final American fort was established in the fall of 1815 on the same site as Hunt's structure, built by Major John Whistler, who had served under Wayne and helped construct both the original Fort Wayne and Fort Dearborn in present-day Chicago. Whistler's fort was the last of the line. With the War of 1812 over and Native American resistance ended, the military post was decommissioned on April 19, 1819, and the last soldiers departed. The fort found new life as a church and school for the Miami and a gathering place for city dwellers; its timbers were later repurposed as beams and foundations for homes. The Officer's Quarters, the final building still standing, was torn down in 1852.
The fort that visitors will tour this September is a reconstruction, and its own story is nearly as remarkable as the original's. The project began in 1964, when Historic Fort Wayne, Inc. was established and began planning a reconstruction using Major Whistler's 1814 drawings. After years of fundraising, the group purchased property in the late 1960s and sought a builder. They found one in Lok-N-Logs Inc., a log home company in Sherburne, New York, which took on the unusual task of constructing the fort first in New York, then transporting it to Indiana, where it was reassembled. The Old Fort officially opened shortly before July 4, 1976, in time to celebrate the nation's Bicentennial, and it remained open daily until the early 1990s. The original Historic Fort Wayne, Inc. disbanded in 1989; the current organization of the same name was formed in 2004 as a volunteer effort to preserve the fort. Though they share a name, the two groups are not connected.
That volunteer spirit is very much alive as the fort approaches its own milestone. Built fifty years ago, the Old Fort has weathered decades of Indiana seasons.
"Be a Tourist in Your Own Hometown" is itself a tradition with a history. The program, run by Visit Fort Wayne, began a quarter-century ago when staff noticed that residents of any city tend to take their own attractions for granted and explore more when they travel. "We wanted to give our residents a day to pretend like they were visitors and to explore and enjoy all that Fort Wayne has to offer," recalled Kristen Guthrie, now vice president of marketing and communications, who was with the organization when the idea was born. The first year, six attractions agreed to open for free, including the Foellinger-Freimann Botanical Conservatory, the History Center, Science Central, and Artlink, all of which have participated every year since. In 2026, dozens of venues across the city — from the Allen County Courthouse and the Embassy Theatre to the Botanical Conservatory and the Fort Wayne Curling Club — will open their doors for free to anyone carrying the event's passport, available at Kroger and Old National Bank locations.
At the Old Fort, the day's program is a chance to step back to the earliest days of Fort Wayne. Visitors can talk with soldiers, civilians, and a surgeon about life on the frontier, watch demonstrations of blacksmithing, spinning, gardening, period cooking, and baking, and enjoy games for all ages. The bake sale offers a sweet treat, and the fort's merchandise shop is open for those who want to take a piece of history home. It's a fitting way to spend a September afternoon — a reminder that the city's name, and its story, began with a fort built by soldiers at the meeting of three rivers, and that the fort, rebuilt by volunteers and kept alive by a community's devotion, still stands to tell that story.