Fort Pickens Area Wrap-up

 Fort Pickens National Seashore Campground; on barrier island across the bay from Pensacola, Florida

Today is day 5 of 5 and tomorrow is moving day. Five days at a campground is unusual for me when I'm traveling although checking my future reservations it will happen a few more times before I get back to Louisiana in July. Hmmmm, I need to think on that some. This campground and area have been on my "list of places" to explore for several years and I'm glad I was able to make it this time. I'll probably not be back. Those two sentences sure sound contradictory, don't they? The reason being, I've seen what I needed to see on this barrier island and although there are more things to see on the mainland, it is just too far and too much traffic to explore from this campground. As summer gets nearer and the tourist invasion happens it will just get more hectic. I'm glad I have Starlink which was reliable and had blazing speed. My Verizon signal varied in strength from 1 bar to 4 bars and was unpredictable. The location of the campsite was great as the view out my back window was interesting. I'm right at the entry point to the campground and have an excellent view of the tent camping area. This campground has a high number of walkers and bicyclists which are great for people watching. 

Yesterday's exploration was the actual Old Fort Pickens from the 1800's. Right off the bat, no bad ju-ju. A little on the good side of average ju-ju. After so many years in this ocean environment and numerous hurricanes, it is surprising the amount of original fort still remains after nearly 200 years. Fort Pickens and three other smaller forts were located near the entrance to Pensacola Bay around 1834. Their purpose was to defend and guard against invasion. The bay was the deepest port on the Northern Gulf coast and was home to the Navy Shipyards.

This map shows the importance of the Fort in defending Pensacola Bay

The first thing I found interesting about Fort Pickens was that Geronimo was held prisoner there. That's right, the Apache leader from the southwest. In 1886, 400 captured Apache were sent to Fort Marion at St. Augustine, Florida. However, for some reason that I haven't discovered, several citizens of Pensacola asked that Geronimo and 14 Apache men be transferred to Fort Pickens. These men were separated from their families who remained behind at Fort Marion. The families were eventually reunited with each other in 1887 at Fort PIckens. One year after that, all of them were transferred to Fort Sill in Oklahoma where Geronimo died in 1909. As a point of reference, the Trail of Tears which relocated the Five Civilized tribes to Oklahoma happened between 1830 and 1850.

This placard in the fort is what brought my attention to Geronimo. If I had heard about this before, I sure forgot about it. One of the benefits of forgetting things is that you get to "re-learn" them. 

The second thing I found interesting was what happened at the fort just before the War of Northern Aggression War for Southern Independance Civil War began. 

A quick timeline:

November 6, 1860; Lincoln wins election

December 20, 1860; South Carolina becomes the first state to secede from the union.

January 10, 1861; Florida becomes the third state to secede from the union. Florida sends a "letter of understanding" to the current President, James Buchanan, saying "if Northern reinforcements stay away from the Pensacola forts then the militia would not attack the forts." This was the same type of message that South Carolina sent to Washington D.C. about Fort Sumter.

March 4, 1861; Lincoln is inaugurated.

Beginning of April of 1861 President Lincoln orders reinforcement to be sent to both Sumter and Pickens.

April 12, 1861; Reinforcements and supplies arrive at the forts, War begins, lasts 4 years with about 620,000 soldiers dead and an unknown number of civilians.

I won't go into matters of the Civil War since I've covered them in other posts when I visited Fort Sumter, Appomattox, Shiloh and many other Civil War sites. It was just interesting both forts were being reinforced on the same day, April 12, 1861 which prompted the beginning of the war.

Entry to Fort Pickens. Those appear to be the original columns. 

Gun emplacements 

Although I had a small flashback to visiting the Catacombs in Rome, there weren't any bad vibes for heebie jeebies

One of the inside cannons. All of the arch-work is because of the need for strength to absorb return fire

 

A larger cannon up top and in the open. That is the Gulf in the background.

This was a nice view from up top by the big gun. The Visitor's center is in one of those building but was closed for renovation. The water in the background is Pensacola Bay.

I walked to the bay to check it out. Again, lots of fisher-people. The lady in lower right was sunbathing while her husband was doing his job of trying to catch supper for her. 

The tow boat and barge was a reminder that the bay is part of the Intracoastal Waterway.

Tomorrow is moving day and I'll be headed almost due north about 120 miles into southern Alabama to a Corps of Engineers campground along the Alabama river. I'm not sure about cell signal since the area is pretty isolated and Google Earth shows it as having lots of trees. Hopefully, if I can't get a cell signal, I'll find an opening in the trees for Starlink. That is one of the main reasons I bought Starlink is for situations just like this. We'll see.  

Ya'll take care of each other. Maybe I'll Cya down the road.