Wrapping around the two peaks of Mount Daemo, Daemosan Fortress is believed to have been first laid out by Baekje as the administrative seat of Dosil-gun. The fortress also carries the nickname "Holeomeoni Fortress" — the Widow's Fortress — from a legend in which a widow of the Yang clan and a bachelor of the Seol clan wagered on who could finish faster: building the fortress, or making a round trip to Seoul.
There is something striking about a folk wager legend surviving alongside the history of a site that once served as an administrative center of state power. Where officials of Dosil-gun once built walls and governed, villagers in later generations retold the place through the story of a widow and a bachelor instead. The rigid history of administration and the soft story of ordinary people have been passed down together within the same fortress walls.