History of Fort William — From Historic Garrison to Outdoor Capital

Long before any garrison was imposed, the territory around modern Fort William was dominated by the fierce and autonomous Highland clans/ Primarily Clan Cameron and Clan Chattan. But human presence here reaches back far further. High on a rocky knoll in Glen Nevis sits Dun Deardail, a vitrified Iron Age hillfort constructed in the 5th century BC. Its drystone walls, laced with internal timbers, were fused into a glassy mass when the structure burned, possibly around 310 BC. Excavations led by AOC Archaeology in 2015, on behalf of Forestry Commission Scotland and the Nevis Landscape Partnership, recovered charred in-situ timbers and confirmed the fort as one of the oldest known settlements in Lochaber.

The area was later commanded from the stronghold of Inverlochy Castle, whose ruins still stand north of the present town. Two defining battles were fought here, both carrying the name Inverlochy.

In September 1431, the Lordship of the Isles crushed a royal army sent to impose Crown authority. An estimated 1,000 royalist soldiers were killed, including the Earl of Caithness, while Clan Donald suffered minimal losses. The defeat forced King James I to rely on the Lord of the Isles to maintain regional stability — proving that the Western Highlands could not be governed from Edinburgh by force alone.

Two centuries later, on 2 February 1645, the second Battle of Inverlochy erupted during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The Marquess of Montrose executed a legendary winter march through the mountains to surprise the Covenanter forces of the Marquess of Argyll camped beneath the castle walls. Argyll’s army was routed. The slaughter was observed from a hillside by Iain Lom, the bard of Clan MacDonald of Keppoch, who composed one of the great poems of Gaelic literature in response.

“I climbed early on the morning of Sunday to the brae above the castle of Inverlochy. I saw the army arraying for battle and victory was with Clan Donald.”

— Iain Lom, Là Inbhir Lochaidh (The Day of Inverlochy), 1645

These battles established a truth that would echo through the following centuries: Lochaber was ungovernable without overwhelming force. It was a lesson the British state would take to heart.

In the spring of 1746, during the final Jacobite Rising, approximately 1,000 Highland and French troops besieged Fort William, the last government-held stronghold in the Great Glen. The Duke of Cumberland had called it “the only fort in the Highlands that is of any consequence,” and proactively replaced its aging governor with the more capable Captain Caroline Scott.

The garrison of 400 men held a crucial advantage: absolute naval supremacy. The sloop of war Baltimore and bomb vessel Serpent provided devastating fire and continuous supplies. To create clear fields of fire, the garrison burned the adjacent civilian settlement of Maryburgh. Military regulations had dictated that the settlement be built of impermanent materials, timber, wattle, and daub — so it could be cleared quickly if the fort came under threat. But archaeological excavations in 2007 by the Centre for Battlefield Archaeology and Glasgow University (GUARD) unearthed hand-made bricks, roofing slates, and window glass alongside the charcoal and burnt daub, evidence that civilians had defied those regulations and built permanent, substantial homes. What the garrison torched was not a disposable encampment but a real town.

The Jacobites, hampered by terrible weather and unable to transport heavy artillery across the treacherous terrain, could not breach the 20-foot stone walls. On 3 April, with Culloden approaching, the siege was abandoned. Two weeks later, the Jacobite cause was extinguished forever, but Fort William had survived, and its survival is the reason the town exists today.

As the Jacobite threat subsided, the British state’s need for a massive military presence waned. But the pacification of the Highlands triggered a devastating transformation. The traditional clan system based on dùthchas, the customary right of clan members to inhabit their territory was systematically dismantled. Clan chiefs became commercial landlords. Ancient communal farms were enclosed and replaced by profitable sheep runs.

Thousands of tenant farmers were forcibly evicted. To ensure they could not return, their cottages were burned to the ground. The displaced were pushed to the coast for marginal industries, kelp harvesting, quarrying, fishing, and when those collapsed, destitution followed. Fort William transformed from a military bastion into a port of embarkation for a traumatised diaspora.

In 1881, an eccentric English meteorologist named Clement Lindley Wragge later nicknamed “The Weather Prophet” committed to climbing Ben Nevis every single day from June to October. Leaving Fort William on horseback at 5:30am, he rode to the Halfway Lochan before continuing on foot, placing and reading instruments at precise intervals to the 4,406-foot summit. His wife took simultaneous sea-level readings in Fort William to provide a comparative baseline.

The physical toll was immense. Wragge reported that his hands frequently became so numb and swollen that he could barely record data or set his instruments. But his pioneering work proved the viability of mountain meteorology and led directly to the construction of a permanent Ben Nevis Observatory in 1883 along with the 'pony track’ that visitors still walk today. The observatory operated until 1904, when funding ran out.

The Barber Who Started a Race

That observatory path became the stage for one of the UK’s great sporting traditions. On 27 September 1895, William Swan a Fort William barber ran from the old post office to the summit and back in 2 hours 41 minutes. The first official race followed in 1898, and in 1903, observatory roadman Ewen MacKenzie set a record of 2 hours 10 minutes that stood for 34 years.

In a spectacularly audacious stunt in 1911, Edinburgh motor dealer Henry Alexander drove a Model T Ford to the summit of Ben Nevis. The gruelling ascent took ten days, after six weeks of preparation in which labourers reinforced boggy moorland and scree with wooden planks. The car’s wheels were wrapped in chains for grip, and Highland ponies hauled it out when it sank axle-deep into the bogs. A life-size bronze statue in Cameron Square commemorates the achievement.

Today, the Ben Nevis Race covers 14 kilometres with 1,340 metres of ascent, capped at 600 runners, and the path they pound is the same path Clement Wragge hauled his instruments up every morning in 1881.

In 1922, Victor Hodgson, an Englishman deeply enamoured with Highland history, established the West Highland Museum in Fort William. Two years later, he discovered one of the most extraordinary artifacts in Scotland in a London junk shop and bought it for £8.

The “Secret Portrait” of Bonnie Prince Charlie consists of a wooden board covered in what appears to be a chaotic smear of oil paints meaningless, abstract, harmless. But when a polished cylindrical mirror is placed precisely on the board, an anamorphic reflection resolves into a pristine portrait of Prince Charles Edward Stuart.

This ingenious device allowed Jacobite sympathisers to secretly toast “the King Over the Water” during the dangerous years following Culloden. If Hanoverian authorities arrived, the cylinder could be swiftly removed, leaving only meaningless smears of paint avoiding charges of treason. It’s one of the most fascinating objects in any Scottish museum equal parts spy craft, political defiance, and sheer ingenuity.

The museum also holds the “Strange Plate” a copper etching plate designed by the artist Robert Strange in 1746, commissioned by the Prince to print Jacobite banknotes. It was never used; Culloden intervened. Since abolishing entry charges in 2011, visitor numbers have surged from roughly 9,000 annually to over 60,000.