The same group of people, including the same military officer, as the last post.
I'm beginning to rethink my theory that these pictures show the future site of a military fort. I think an equally reasonable guess is that these pictures show the remains of a fort from the past. To start with I did my due diligence on this collection, which I hadn't done before my last post. I looked up bastion. A bastion is a certain type of fort. Forget the wooden stockade popular in westerns. Bastions were built for artillery. Large, usually made from both brick and mortar and dirt. They were either pentagonal or hexagonal in shape with triangular shaped extensions from the points were the main walls came together. By mounting one canon at each point of the triangle, a clear field of fire could be established with no gaps in coverage. The actual walls of the fort were so thick, that they could easily absorb fire from the enemy's field artillery. The only way to beat a bastion style fort was to starve the inhabitants out.
Click on triangular plan in labels to see more. I bought these at an antique store near Joshua Tree National Park and with the end (hopefully) of the government shutdown, I should be back in that area soon and if the pictures from this collection I didn't buy are still there, at some point in the future, there'll be a lot more than the three I'm putting up in a row.
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