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Five forts, under three flags, stood at or near the confluence between the 1680s and 1819, and the modern city still marks where they stood. The French built first: Fort Miami — Fort St. Philippe des Miamis — was established by 1722 on the St. Marys near the head of the portage, west of the present downtown, and a second French post followed in 1750. The British took the post over in 1760 and held the site through Pontiac's War and the Revolution, when it passed in turn to American-aligned and then American hands. The military succession itself is told in the Story and Wars chapters; the footprints are what concern this one.
The American forts stood in what is now the heart of downtown. The first, built in the autumn of 1794 under General Anthony Wayne's order and commanded by Colonel John Hamtramck, was dedicated and named Fort Wayne on October 22, 1794; it stood at the present Berry and Clay streets, and a historical marker stands on the site. The second fort, built in 1798 under Colonel Thomas Hunt, stood about a hundred yards north of the first, near the present Main and Clay streets, just east of Fire Station No. 1. The third and last fort, built in the winter of 1815–16 under Major John Whistler — the grandfather of the painter James McNeill Whistler — stood farther east near the present East Berry Street, in the area of today's Cinema Center. It was decommissioned on April 19, 1819, the last military post at the confluence. Part of its ground afterward became Old Fort Park, the city's first park, whose purchase in 1863 is recorded in the Parks and Plans chapter.
The marker landscape is densest at Headwaters Park, 333 South Clinton Street, where a ring of state and local markers treats the site's layered past — among them "The Fur Traders and the Military at Fort Wayne," which covers the French posts, the British period and the American forts in one text. Nothing of any of the five forts survives in place; the third fort exists again, in replica, a short walk away, and that replica is the next entry.
Sources: Indiana Historical Bureau and Historical Marker Database entries for the Fort Wayne fort sites and the Headwaters Park marker ring; Historic Fort Wayne Inc. site histories; the Parks and Plans chapter of this history for Old Fort Park, 1863.