concern to him; but by 1872 he was in grave financial trouble he would never escape before his death in 1890. Over the years, at least 24 Congressional committees would vote to compensate Frémont, and finally in February 1898 President William McKinley signed a bill directing that the court of claims fix the compensation due. But in 1968 the Frémont heirs complained it had failed to carry out this direction, with John Frémont then recently dead and his widow Jessie over 70 years old. The fort as government property The Civil War prompted the construction of several coastal defense batteries located inside the Golden Gate. Initially these defenses were built as temporary wartime structures rather than permanent fortifications and one of these was constructed in 1864 at Point San Jose, as the location of Upper Fort Mason was then known. A breast-high wall of brick and mounts for six Rodman cannons and six 42-pounder guns were built on the site. Excavation in the early 1980s uncovered the well-preserved remains of the western-half of the temporary battery, and it has now been restored to its condition during the Civil War. The fort was named Fort Mason in 1882, after Richard Barnes Mason, a former military governor of California. President Grover Cleveland established the Endicott Board in 1885 for the purpose of modernizing the nation's coastal fortifications. Chaired by Secretary of War William Endicott, the board recommended new defenses at 22 U.S. seaports, deeming San Francisco Harbor second only to that of New York in strategic importance. As a result, an extensive series of forts, batteries, and guns were built on the harbor, including Fort Mason. In 1904, the previous Division of the Pacific (1869-91) was re-established and formally stood up as the Pacific Division with subordinate or related commands, including the Department of California (to include the Hawaiian Islands) and the Department of the Columbia. The Pacific Division was headquartered at Fort Mason, San Francisco. By the end of 1907, the War Department, under Secretary of War William Howard Taft, had eliminated the echelon of administrative units called Divisions and subsequently the Pacific Division that same year. Notably, the first and only commander of the Pacific Division was Major General Arthur MacArthur Jr from 1903-1907. The piers and sheds of Lower Fort Mason were originally built from 1912 to warehouse army supplies and provide docking space and a base for ships