Fort Barrancas Tour: Stop 5

Fort Barrancas Sally Port

Kiss

Quick Facts

Location:

Pensacola, Florida

Significance:

Civil War, Black History, Confederates, Network to Freedom

Amenities

1 listed

Trailhead

Sally Port

You are standing inside a covered walkway called a sally port. A sally port served as the main path into and out of a fort like Fort Barrancas.

Soldiers opened and closed heavy oak doors to secure the sally port. Look closely and you will see a smaller door in the bigger door. This wicket door allowed entry without opening the main doors.

The bricks around you supported different industries in West Florida. Local sawmill and brickyard owners relied on enslaved people to operate. To fire kilns for baking bricks, enslaved lumbermen harvested firewood from the region’s rich forests. To produce bricks, brickyard owners trained enslaved men in various brickmaking skills and shipped bricks to construction sites on Pensacola Bay and along the Gulf Coast.