When completed in January 1876, the Cooktown magazine was accessible only by boat. Local agitation led to a road being made along the seafront to the magazine, and Webber Esplanade was extended around the northern edge of Grassy Hill in the mid-1880s. By the late 1880s a number of dwellings had been erected at the base of Grassy Hill in the vicinity of the magazine, and the local volunteer defence force had installed a gun nearby. Despite an 1889 recommendation by Foreman McMillan of the Works Department that the magazine be removed two or three miles up the railway line from the port, this did not eventuate. Treasury funds for the removal were allocated in 1890, but by mid-1891 Queensland had entered a severe economic depression, and the funding was curtailed.