Place

Original Powder-Magazine

The Powder Magazine rooms are accessed through the Artillery Complex. The entrance to the Power Magazine area is on the northeast wall of the interior room of the Artillery Complex, to the right of the Ignacio Daza portrait. This entry way is 6 feet 5 inches tall and three feet wide.  The first room is long and narrow stretching off to your left. The entrance to the Powder Magazine Room is straight ahead. In this first room, to the left, an exhibit blocks off part of the room. On the exhibit, in English and Spanish, reads,  The Powder Room Exhibit. An illustration shows a section cut through the magazine room. It shows a narrow opening up through the roof, to the gun deck level of the Castillo. The text reads,  “You can enter the former powder magazine through this doorway. Built in 1675, it is one of the oldest rooms in the fort. It was originally built to store gunpowder but soon proved too damp. During the 1702 siege, the room was used as a trash pit and then sealed closed. When reopened over 100 years later, animal bones found inside inspired many local myths, one claiming the bones belonged to lovers buried alive inside the Castillo.â€,  On the wall, to right of the exhibit, you can enter the next room by crawling through a metal, 3 foot deep, entry tunnel. The tunnel is 3 feet high and 2 feet wide. Once you have knelt down, there is a metal handrail that curves up from the ground at 12 inches on your right. The handrail continues through the tunnel. The top of the tunnel is padded, but please watch your head.  Once you have passed through the tunnel, you can stand up. This is the Powder Magazine room. It is 20 feet by 20 feet with an arched ceiling, about 7 feet high. The room is empty. The floor is uneven with loose crunchy pebbles.  To exit the room, you must return through the metal tunnel as there are no other exits.

Quick Facts

Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits, Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits

The tiny doorway you see here is the entrance to the original gunpowder magazine. The Spanish realized soon after construction that the little room was too humid to store powder, so they used it for storage and as a trash pit during the 51 days of the 1702 Siege. Eventually, a new magazine was built in the northwest corner. When the Spanish renovated the Castillo in the mid-1700s, the old magazine and the ladder room were sealed, not to be opened again until 1833, when the U.S. Army was performing their own modifications.

Castillo de San Marcos National Monument

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Last updated: February 11, 2021