Fort Barrancas in Escambia County, Florida

Photograph: Pensacola FL Fort Barrancas pano01.jpg by Ebyabe · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Restored from the credited Wikimedia Commons file, normalized to the consistent attraction-card frame and converted to WebP by 1stFlorida.com. Portrait originals retain their complete composition over a softly blurred extension of the same photograph.

Escambia County attraction

Fort Barrancas

Escambia County · Panhandle & Emerald Coast

Three fortifications on one bluff, Spanish and American, joined by an underground tunnel, on the naval air station.

ABOUT THIS PLACE

This bluff over Pensacola Bay has carried forts since 1698, when the Spanish built Fort San Carlos de Austria on it. The French destroyed that in 1719. The Spanish came back, put up the Bateria de San Antonio at sea level in 1787 and a wooden fort on the hill between 1787 and 1797. After the United States bought Florida in 1821, army engineers under Joseph Gilbert Totten rebuilt the hilltop work between 1839 and 1844 as a heavy brick fort with a dry moat, and drove an underground walkway down to the water battery so the two could work as one. On January 8, 1861, two months before Fort Sumter, fifty United States soldiers here exchanged fire with Florida militia. The garrison withdrew to Fort Pickens, the Confederates held Barrancas and were shelled from across the water, and they abandoned it in May 1862. The army left for good on April 15, 1947. It became a National Historic Landmark in 1960, passed to the National Park Service in 1971 and was restored between 1978 and 1980. The area also holds the Advanced Redoubt, two short trails and a visitor center. It opens Wednesday through Sunday from 9 to 4, with last entry at 3:30, there is no entrance charge, and every visitor's identification is checked on the base

GETTING THERE

Get Directions ↗Official Website ↗

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