In 1885, William C. Endicott, President Grover Cleveland's secretary of war, was tasked with creating the Board of Fortifications to review seacoast defenses.

The findings of the board illustrated a grim picture of existing defenses, and in its 1886 report recommended a massive $127 million construction program of breech-loading cannons, mortars, floating batteries, and submarine mines for some 29 locations on the US coastline.

A new Board of Fortifications, under President Theodore Roosevelt's secretary of war, William Taft, was convened in 1905.

Taft recommended technical changes, such as more searchlights, electrification, and, in some cases, less guns in particular fortifications.

The seacoast forts were funded under the Spooner Act of 1902 and construction began within a few years and lasted into the 1920s.

[5] After the American entry into World War I, the army recognized the need for large-caliber railway guns for use on the Western Front.

Also during World War I, it was recognized that naval guns were rapidly improving and longer-range weapons were needed.

[12][13] The guns were originally in open mounts with protected magazines, but most were casemated against air attack, beginning in 1940 as World War II approached the United States.

However, the batteries in the Philippines were not casemated, as the 1923 Washington Naval Treaty prohibited further fortification of US and Japanese Pacific-area possessions, and in 1940–41 there was a lack of resources to do so.

[14] Along with other coast artillery weapons, the 12-inch guns in the Philippines saw action in the Japanese invasion in World War II.

Other limiting factors were that they had mostly armor-piercing ammunition, and the open mountings were vulnerable to air and high-angle artillery attack.

Three additional long-range casemated batteries were constructed during the war, at Fort Miles, Delaware, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and on Sullivan's Island near Fort Moultrie in the Harbor Defenses of Charleston, South Carolina.