Fort Pickens in Escambia County, Florida

Photograph: GINS FL Fort Pickens 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 Pickens

Escambia County · Panhandle & Emerald Coast

A five-sided brick fort of 21.5 million bricks at the end of Santa Rosa Island, held by the Union through the whole Civil War.

ABOUT THIS PLACE

Fort Pickens was built between 1829 and 1834 at the western end of Santa Rosa Island, guarding the entrance to Pensacola Bay. The French engineer Simon Bernard designed it as a pentagon, Colonel William H. Chase of the Army Corps of Engineers ran the work, and it took 21.5 million bricks, most of them laid by enslaved workers. It was the largest of four forts covering the bay and was named for the Revolutionary War officer Andrew Pickens. In January 1861 Lieutenant Adam J. Slemmer pulled his 51 soldiers and 30 sailors back into it and refused to give it up. Reinforcements came in April, the Confederates failed to take it at the Battle of Santa Rosa Island that October, and by May 10, 1862, Pensacola had surrendered to it. It was one of only four forts in the South that stayed in Union hands for the entire war. The Apache leader Geronimo was held prisoner here with several of his warriors from October 1886 to May 1887. A powder magazine blew up on June 20, 1899, destroying Bastion D and killing a soldier. Concrete Endicott batteries went up around it from the 1890s. The army left in 1947 and the National Park Service has it now

GETTING THERE

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