Fort Barrancas Overlook

Fort Barrancas Overlook Site Photo

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Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits, Scenic View/Photo Spot

The U.S. Army built Fort Barrancas in the 1840's as one of four fortifications to protect Pensacola Bay and the navy yard from attack. Fort Pickens on Santa Rosa Island and Fort McRee on Perdido Key, guarded the channel.

Americans built harbor forts during the Revolutionary War (first system) and another series of forts between 1789 and 1812 (second system). Advanced Redoubt and Forts Barrancas, Pickens, and McRee were part of the Third System of coastal fortifications built between 1816 and 1870.

Fort Barrancas and its water battery, situated on a bluff, could support their crossfire and fire shots at ships that entered the bay.

Advanced Redoubt was built to protect the Navy Yard and Fort Barrancas from a land-based attack. During the Civil War the Confederates briefly held Fort Barrancas and exchanged gunfire with Federal forces at Fort Pickens.

Spanish Water Battery
The white, stuccoed, semicircular structure down in front of you is Batería de San Antonio, a battery built by Spain in 1797. After recapturing the Pensacola area from the British, the Spanish decided to build this fortification as part of a plan to strengthen harbor defenses. The maximum range of smoothbore cannon at that time was about one mile. The United States modified and armed the battery while building Fort Barrancas in the 1840s.

The term water battery comes from the fortification's location, which was close to water level. From this battery gunners could fire smoothbore cannon shots at ship masts or skip shots across the surface of the bay hoping to hit wooden hulls at the waterline.

Fort McRee
In front of you across Pensacola Bay once stood Fort McRee. The US Army built the fort at the end of Perdido Key in the early 1840s to help protect Pensacola Bay and ended up almost destroying it during the Civil War. In January 1861-three months before the war started at Fort Sumter in South Carolina-the US Army abandoned Barrancas and Fort McRee and consolidated its troops at Fort Pickens. The governors of Alabama and Florida quickly dispatched state militias to occupy the vacant military posts. In a massive artillery exchange with the Confederates in November, cannon fire from two Union ships and Fort Pickens nearly demolished Fort McRee. Considered obsolete by the end of the Civil War, Fort McRee was never repaired.

Simultaneous volleys raked [Fort McRee's] outer walls and parapets ... the whole structure seemed to bulge and sink to earth in one general conflagration.

Years after the Civil War battle the ruins of Fort McRee crumbled into the sand and the Gulf of Mexico.