Fort Levett was built on 140 acres (0.57 km2) of Cushing Island, and the coast artillery fortification was visited by several Secretaries of War, including Jacob M. Dickinson in 1909.

[4] King Charles I of England granted Levett 6,000 acres (24 km2) to found a city the explorer proposed to call York, after his English birthplace.

Levett founded a plantation in 1623, leaving a group of Yorkshiremen and women behind, and he returned to England.

Battery Daniels was named for Lieutenant Napoleon Daniels, killed in action against Native Americans at Crazy Woman's Fork in 1866, and had two 3-inch M1898 guns (also called 15-pounder guns) on retractable masking parapet mounts.

[8] In order to furnish its base with water, the army dug four wells on Cushing Island.

"This hotel", noted a War Department report, "is so near that the guns can not be fired without causing much damage to the building.

[5] In 1915, with World War I raging in Europe and with rapidly improving dreadnought battleships providing an increased threat, the Board of Review recommended that Fort Levett receive a new, modernized battery as part of a program to increase the range of coastal forts.

Battery Foote had two 12-inch M1895 guns on new, high-angle M1917 barbette carriages for increased range and was completed in 1920.

[5] The two 10-inch guns of Battery Kendrick were ordered dismounted as part of a railway artillery program in 1917, but were not shipped out and were soon remounted.

[5] In June 1939 a quartermaster survey showed that most of the 28 buildings at Fort Levett were in "poor" or "uninhabitable" condition.

[5][6] With the end of World War II in 1945 all US coast defense guns were scrapped by 1948, and subsequently the obsolete Fort Levett was sold by the government, which asked $177,000 for the property.