Fort Pickens
Fort Pickens is a pentagonal former coastal fort on the western tip of the elongated Santa Rosa Island in Florida . It protected the entrance to the bay and port of Pensacola , Florida.
The fort was named after Andrew Pickens, a member of the US Congress . It is now part of the Gulf Islands National Seashore and is managed by the National Park Service .
history
After the British-American War of 1812, the US government decided to use defensive works to protect all of the country's major ports. As a result of this decision, the French engineer Simon Bernard was commissioned to build a fort on Santa Rosa Island. The construction work dragged on from 1829 to 1834, with around 21.5 million bricks being built and most of the work being done by slaves. Colonel William H. Chase, a member of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, was in charge of the construction work .
Fort Pickens was the largest of the three forts built to block the harbor entrance. It was supported on the opposite side of the bay to the west by Fort McRee and to the north by Fort Barrancas .
After the Mexican-American War , the fort was not reoccupied and was initially ignored by both sides for inexplicable reasons , even during the looming secession of Florida until the end of 1860. At the beginning of the Civil War , when it was already come to the first shootings between the Fort occupation and Confederate troops (is likely that this is the first exchange of fire of war ever were) decided the deputy commander of Fort Barrancas Lieutenant Adam J. Slemmer on 8th January 1861 that Fort Pickens, which was now very dilapidated, was better to defend than any other existing fortification. At midnight, Union forces began evacuating Fort Barrancas and Fort McRee. The crew made the left behind supplies of ten tons of powder and all cannons unusable. The Union troops who escaped to Santa Rosa Island by boat were about 80 men.
Ironically, after the fighting began, the now general and former construction supervisor of the fort, William H. Chase, and the Confederate troops at his disposal, were given the task of conquering the plant for the south without having the appropriate equipment (siege artillery) .
Because the facility could always be supplied from the sea and the southern states were unable to prevent this, Fort Pickens remained in the hands of the Union until the end of the war and thus made the port of Pensacola and the naval shipyard located therein unusable for the Confederation .
From 1886 to 1887 the Apache chief Geronimo was housed as a prisoner in the fort.
The fort was used for military purposes until 1947. After that, however, it was severely neglected and partly also demolished. The north wall was removed and a parking lot was built at this point. The south wall was cut by a road and was not left unscathed either.
source
- William C. Davis & Bell I. Wiley "The Civil War - Fort Sumter to Gettysburg" Black Dog & Leventhal, New York 1994 ISBN 1-884822-08-8
Web links
Coordinates: 30 ° 20 ′ N , 87 ° 17 ′ W