Front Battery Kinzie.

Battery Kinzie is a concrete Endicott Period Battery located on Fort Worden, Jefferson County, Washington. Named in G.O. 245, 13 Dec 1909, for Brigadier General David Hunter Kinzie, a U.S. Civil War veteran who died in 1904. The Battery was begun in Jun 1908, completed in 1910 and transferred to the Coastal Artillery for use 10 Jan 1912 at a total cost of $207,832.50. The guns were dismounted in 1944 toward the end of World War II.

Battery Kinzie was built to solve several weaknesses in the original fortification plan. The battery added two 12-inch guns to the modest number of four already in the defenses. It was located where it could protect the entire entrance of Admiralty Inlet from shore to shore. Its beachside position allowed it to cover the waterway below the fog that often lay just above the water surface.

Fort Worden, along with the heavy batteries of Fort Flagler and Fort Casey, once guarded nautical entrance to Puget Sound. These posts, established in the late 1890s, became the first line of a fortification system designed to prevent a hostile fleet from reaching such targets as the Bremerton Naval Yard and the cities of Seattle, Tacoma and Everett. Construction began in 1897 and continued in one form or another until the fort was closed in 1953. The property was purchased as a state park in 1955. Fort Worden is named after Rear Admiral John L. Worden.

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