Before being deeded to the State of Rhode Island in 1965, Fort Adams had served the U.S. Navy for ten years and the U.S. Army for more than a century.

The Fort rests at an elbow to the entrance of Newport Harbor. Ships need to enter the East Passage of Narragansett Bay, passing the Coast Guard station and lighthouse at Castle Hill and the Hammersmith Farm of the Kennedy family, before coming broadside to Fort Adams on the east and Fort Wetherill on Jamestown to the west. This ‘choke point,’ commanded before Fort Adams by a colonial battery on one side of the passage and Fort Dumpling on the other, was a good location to foil sea invaders to Newport Harbor, which lies beyond these sentinels. Further up the passage was another fort on Goat Island. In colonial times this emplacement which formed a kind of triangle with the former was known successively as Fort Anne, Fort George, and Fort Liberty.

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