Fort Barrancas Tour: Stop 7

Fort Barrancas Scarp Gallery

Quick Facts

Location:

Pensacola, Florida

Significance:

Civil War, Black History, Confederates, Network to Freedom

Amenities

1 listed

Trailhead

Scarp Gallery

This covered walkway is a gallery. The gallery runs along the inside of Fort Barrancas and provided soldiers access to narrow loopholes. In a battle, soldiers would fire their muskets through these loopholes. Ventilators above the loopholes allowed gun powder smoke to escape.

Look closely down the length of the gallery and you will see a wall made up of arches supporting sand fill. Army engineers used this innovative technique because a curved surface can support more weight than a flat surface.

Like all buildings, Fort Barrancas required maintenance after its completion. In 1851, a slaveholder rented an enslaved man named Peter Dyson to Army engineers. Engineers forced Dyson to make masonry repairs to the fort. In 1861, the first year of the American Civil War, Peter and his wife Henrietta sailed to Fort Pickens and freedom on the Underground Railroad.