AUGUSTA — Do-it-yourselfers looking to make their own personal palisade wall to ward off pesky neighbors can do so out of former, though not original, pieces of Old Fort Western.
Fort officials are selling off 1,027 cedar posts that have formed the historic 1754 fort’s palisade walls since 1988.
The palisades have been replaced with new cedar posts as part of an improvement project at the fort that began last year and is expected to be complete by May 15.
Rather than haul the old posts off to the Hatch Hill landfill or chip them up into compost, the city is putting them up for sale from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at the fort. If there are any left after that, they will be available for sale May 14 as well.
“They’re 26 years old, but they’ve still got a lot of good wood left in them,” Linda Novak, director and curator of the fort, said of the cedar posts that previously stood guard around the city-owned Old Fort Western site overlooking the Kennebec River. “A lot of people have been calling, asking what we were going to do with them, saying they’d like to have some of them.”
Novak said people have expressed interest in using them to build raised garden beds or split-rail fences.
Many of the posts have some rot on them, particularly on the parts that were underground, but many are also intact and most appear to have plenty of solid wood left in them.
The fort itself used some of the posts to make a three-tiered split-rail fence around the garden at the fort.
Novak said one parent said she planned to use the wood to cut it into smaller pieces to make a miniature replica of Fort Western for her kids.
Others have expressed interest in buying a bunch of them to make a fence.
Dan Nichols, associate development director for the city of Augusta, hopes to get 100 of them to build his wife a 300-foot “forever fence” along a section of their driveway.
He said he’s interested in using the posts because they are made of durable, solid cedar but also because of their connection to Old Fort Western.
“What better material to use than the posts from the oldest wooden fort in America?” Nichols said. “I am after the historical value, the character of the wood and the irregularities of the posts.”
Novak said someone could use them to build a personal palisade wall, but the builder should check with a local code enforcement officer before doing so.
The posts range in size from 8 to 12 feet in length and 4 to 10 inches in diameter.
The sales will be first come, first served and cash and carry, with purchasers responsible for removing their posts once purchased.
The posts will sell for $5 each for one to four posts, or $4 each for anyone purchasing five or more.
The money raised will help fund special events programming at the fort, including Independence Day festivities, an annual friends and family dinner, and probably Memorial Day activities at the fort.
Cedar is known for its resistance to rotting.
“Cedar really lasts,” said Pete Morrissey, an historical interpreter at the fort recently working on another fort improvement, a “cheval de frise” a large log with smaller, pointy pieces of wood sticking out of it, used to ward off invading forces on horseback. “It’s good stuff, especially if you want to build a fence.”
City councilors authorized the sale of the posts, declaring them surplus property, at their April 21 meeting.
The palisade replacement project began last year, with archaeologists taking advantage of the work by doing some digging for artifacts and evidence of the original fort’s layout while the old posts were removed and out of the way.
Novak said remaining work on the project, to be completed by May 15, includes installing a new flagpole and a hefty ridge pole that will be installed on the new main back gate, allowing the fort to be secured much more than the previous palisades layout, which didn’t completely surround the fort, as the walls do now.
Keith Edwards — 621-5647
Twitter: @kedwardskj
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