At Fort Pickens

[18thVirginia]

The parade grounds with Battery Pensacola to the left.

 

[18thVirginia]

View under the arches in the above photo. It was impossible to take every photo without tourists on this day, but I also like to have people in some of the fort photos to give a sense of scale.

 

[18thVirginia]

View from the upper deck of the photos above.

 

[rickvox79]

Thanks, rickvox. I know you've posted a lot of photos of Ft. Pickens in the past, but I'm still so excited that after years and years, we were finally able to go there that I uploaded these, some of which are repetitions of your earlier ones. And I'd agree, Ft. Pickens has a lot more interesting history than one would think. There was also a terrific ranger tour the day we were there.

Hey, the more pictures the better! That poor fort has been through a lot. Barrancas is in better shape but Pickens was always my favorite to visit. I'm hoping to make my way back over to Barrancas again soon. Just waiting for the weather to cool down a bit.

 

[18thVirginia]

The outer wall of the fort--the two staircases should meet at the bottom, but you can see where that's covered with sand.

 

[18thVirginia]

Another staircase. In addition to the slave stonemasons brought in from New Orleans, local slaves were used for the work that didn't require expertise. The ranger noted that the request to the Congress for funding in the 1820s called them all "servants" and didn't mention slavery.

 

[18thVirginia]

Looking from the upper deck out toward Fort Barrancas and Pensacola. The buildings are from the early 1900s. This fort was used until 1947.

 

[Patrick H]

Thank you for this excellent photo tour! Your photos are give me a real sense of the place. I was going to ask what caused all the destruction in one of your early photos, but then I saw your caption explaining the explosion. I am curious about the vaulted brick roofs--built very much like a Missouri-German wine cellar, but much thicker. Were these originally covered over with sand or earth?

 

[18thVirginia]

I'm guessing these were covered over like the vaulted roofs on the photo in post #7. I'm not absolutely sure about this, but the ranger may have said that the military took off that part of the wall when they were using Battery Pensacola. It would also have a lot of storm damage as it fronts directly on the Gulf of Mexico. I have some photos of the tops of the vaults which I'll try to get posted later.

 

[18thVirginia]

A photo from Ft. Wiki which gives you an idea of the gun placements and construction. This is aimed out toward the Gulf. http://www.fortwiki.com/Fort_Pickens

 

[18thVirginia]

Patrick, here are some more photos of the tops of the vaulted arches.

The white is lime--I have a photo where you can see stalactites formed by the lime dripping down on the interior.

 

[Patrick H]

Patrick, here are some more photos of the tops of the vaulted arches.

The white is lime--I have a photo where you can see stalactites formed by the lime dripping down on the interior.

Very nice pictures. Thanks again. I believe that extremely white lime in the mortar comes from sea shells. It's found around the Atlantic coast a lot. Here in the "interior" our limestone-derived lime makes darker gray mortar. When people here want white lines between their bricks, they need to order special mortar--or so I've been told by a client who wanted that appearance in a facility they were building.

 

[Patrick H]

One more thought: I just dropped in on this part of Florida via Google satellite. I saw all of the above-mentioned forts in relation to each other and the inlet. I checked out both the satellite and the map views. It's a very informative "addendum" to this nice photo tour.

 

[18thVirginia]

The white in the mortar may be from the white sand of the area around Ft. Pickens. Most of the ugly brown sand that you see on beaches elsewhere is from the remains of dead sea creatures. The sand on the beaches around Ft. Pickens is called "sugar sand" and it's perfectly white and squeaky when you walk on it.

 

[18thVirginia]

Here's an view of the fort showing its location across from Pensacola:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/eb/8e/81/eb8e81cf80d23a96badff6bf3641483e.jpg

 

[Patrick H]

This is so cool!

What I meant about the white lime mortar is that lime is an ingredient of brick mortar. It can come from a variety of sources. In the Missouri, it's from ground limestone, which I'm pretty sure is ancient, petrified coral lime. But I'm not a geologist. On the lower Atlantic coast, I believe shells are a much more immediate source of the lime that is necessary for the mortar. That lime is WHITE and so is the sand that goes into the mortar, so.....there you have it: White lines between the bricks!

 

[18thVirginia]

A WWII lookout tower from the 1940s, when there were a lot of U-boats out along the Gulf Coast.

 

[18thVirginia]

More of the Spanish American War Barracks Pensacola installations. This is looking Southwest.

 

[18thVirginia]

Patrick, you should like this. In the vaulted arch at the top, you can see small stalactites where the lime has leached out of the mortar in the past 150+ years. They're the little white lines.

 

[bankerpapaw]

Beautiful pictures. Thanks.