They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. “Peace, peace,” they say, when there is no peace.

Jeremiah 6:14

Florida’s Fort Pickens, built in the 1820’s on the western end of the long barrier island that so effectively shelters Pensacola Bay, is the largest of the three forts built to work in harmony to protect a key stretch of the Gulf Coast.

Not just large, but home to more than twenty-one million bricks, bricks that were mortared in place one at a time in ridiculously harsh conditions!

Later, the fort was used to imprison Apache warriors such as Geronimo.

What many people don’t know is that Fort Pickens was built on a bed of violence and cruelty. The Army forced enslaved Black men to build and later repair the fort. Later Fort Pickens become a destination on the Underground Railroad during the Civil War and after. Freedom-seeking African Americans traveled to the fort to emancipate themselves.

Ft. Pickens official website

Over time, even though it played an important defensive role in both the Civil War and the Spanish-American War, the fort could not keep up with advancing technologies in weaponry.

It remains, however, a wonderfully well preserved historical artifact, and I strongly recommend a visit (so long as you take the time and the care to do your research and read all the interpretive material as you climb around the site).

But I know – always – that you are mostly here to see the photographs! And I can promise you another great collection.

Scroll through slowly, and enjoy your virtual tour of Pensacola’s Fort Pickens; with the added color, of course, of two enthusiastic children!

Peace – and I mean that in every way in this world of such deep and abiding conflict – DEREK