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Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings

	PANTON, LESLIE AND COMPANY WAREHOUSE SITE Florida
Escambia County, Main and Baylen Streets, Pensacola.

This warehouse was the center of the lucrative trade of the influential British firm Panton, Leslie & Co., which dominated Indian trade during the years of the Spanish regime in Florida. William Panton, a Scot, had emigrated to Charleston, S.C. In 1775 he moved to East Florida, where he formed the trading company. He built up trade with the Creek Indians, but his Loyalist sentiments brought him into conflict with South Carolina and Georgia authorities, who during the War for Independence confiscated his property and branded him an outlaw. From 1784, when the British evacuated Florida, until 1801 he lived mostly in West Florida. Spain sought the friendship of the Florida Indians to counter the penetration of Anglo-American backwoodsmen to the north. The Spanish allowed Panton, without loss of British citizenship or freedom of worship, to continue his activities.

At its peak Panton's company monopolized trade with the Creek, Chickasaw, and Cherokee Indians. It maintained a chain of agencies, branches, and trading posts extending from Havana and Nassau to New Orleans and from Mobile to the Chickasaw Bluffs. Despite competition from U.S. traders after Spain withdrew to the 31st parallel in 1795, Panton remained prosperous and left an estate of £10,000. The ruins of the warehouse were removed in the 1940's. On the site the city erected a replica of the original building, on approximately one-third scale. A marker near the replica marks the approximate burial place of Alexander McGillivray, the influential Creek leader, who died in 1793 and was buried in Panton's garden.

	SAN MARCOS DE APALACHE (Fort St. Marks) Florida
Wakulla County, on Fla. 363, about 2 miles south of U.S. 98, at the junction of the Wakulla and St. Marks Rivers, just south of the village of St. Marks. San Marcos de Apalache Historic State Park

The Spanish constructed three wooden forts at this site during their first occupation of Florida, from 1565 to 1763. They had begun a stone fort when England acquired Florida in 1763. During the British regime (1763-83), Panton, Leslie & Co. founded a trading center at the site, then known as Fort St. Marks, and remained after the Spanish reoccupation of the San Marcos area, in 1787. San Marcos, as a result, became a thriving center of Indian trade. During his Seminole campaign, in 1818, Gen. Andrew Jackson captured the fort and settlement.

He executed two British traders near the fort, one of the episodes that brought United States-Spanish relations to a crisis and influenced the Spanish to sign the Adams-Onis Treaty (1819), by which the United States acquired Florida. During the Civil War the Confederates superimposed entrenchments and fortifications upon the ruins of the earlier Spanish forts.

The State-owned tract, known as San Marcos de Apalache Historic Memorial, is heavily wooded, and only a portion of the stonework from the last Spanish fort stands above ground. The fort site is open to the public. A museum houses artifacts found in the area and exhibits prepared by the Florida State Museum.

NHL Designation: 11/13/66