Fort Winthrop was a defensive fortification in Boston Harbor

Boston Harbor

Boston Harbor is a natural harbor and estuary of Massachusetts Bay, and is located adjacent to the city of Boston, Massachusetts. It is home to the Port of Boston, a major shipping facility in the northeast.-History:...

 named after John Winthrop

John Winthrop

John Winthrop was a wealthy English Puritan lawyer, and one of the leading figures in the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the first major settlement in New England after Plymouth Colony. Winthrop led the first large wave of migrants from England in 1630, and served as governor for 12 of...

, the early governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony

Massachusetts Bay Colony

The Massachusetts Bay Colony was an English settlement on the east coast of North America in the 17th century, in New England, situated around the present-day cities of Salem and Boston. The territory administered by the colony included much of present-day central New England, including portions...

. It was built on Governors Island

Governors Island (Massachusetts)

Governors Island was an island in Boston Harbor in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. The island was subsumed by land reclamation for the construction and extension of Logan International Airport....

, which had been granted to Winthrop in 1632. His family owned the island until 1808, when the United States acquired land in the center of the island for the construction of a fort. Between 1808 and 1812 the government built an earthen fort on that land. In 1834 the government acquired the rest of the island, and construction began on a stone fort in the 1840s. Work was halted on it in 1875, and by the 1890s it had been abandoned.

Governors Island, which was separated from other harbor islands and the mainland by extensive mudflats, was joined to the mainland in 1946, as part of the expansion of Logan International Airport

Logan International Airport

General Edward Lawrence Logan International Airport is located in the East Boston neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts . It covers , has six runways, and employs an estimated 16,000 people. It is the 19th busiest airport in the United States.Boston serves as a focus city for JetBlue Airways...

.