About twenty years ago, I was one of a crew who excavated at the historic site of Fort de Chartres, located upriver from St. Louis, Missouri on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. The historic French fort of Fort de Chartres, called Fort Charters by the locals, is the third structure of that name built in the 18th century during the French and Indian War. As it is today, the historic site was open to the public, in fact there is an annual 'Rendezvouz', where people come dressed as Native Americans or French or British soldiers and stage mock battles (although there never was a battle at Fort de Chartres). When we excavated there, the only thing standing at the fort was the crumbling powder magazine, the museum and a part of one bastian; a waist-high brick wall had been built in the 1930s in the approximate location of where the fort walls might have been. In the mid-1980s the state of Illinois planned to rebuild the fort. Our little group, headed by Dave Keene, were there to gather some information about the site so that the reconstruction could be as accurate as possible, and built so as not to disturb the original foundations. We would gather it by excavating, using a little trenching machine called a Tiger. It was a lot of fun for us, and, like many archaeological projects in historic sites, we excavated with an audience; always a dangerous situation for four young people with brand new shiny MA degrees.
The top photo is of Dave Walitshek and Ed Safran cleaning up one of the excavated walls. In the background you can see the 1930s wall. The bottom photo is the only surviving evidence of your guide on a Tiger. There are no photos of Kelly Hamilton, but she knows she was there. Today, more of the walls of Fort de Chartres have been rebuilt as authentically as they could make it; and you can still go to Rendezvous, if you've the appropriate clothing.
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