Geronimo's Next-to-Last Stand: Fort Pickens

One of our excursions while in Pensacola Beach was to visit Fort Pickens, a harbor fort that for 100 years protected Pensacola Bay and the naval yard there.  The building of the fort was begun in 1829, completed in 1834 and used until 1947 when airplanes, missiles and bombs made the fort obsolete. 



Masonry walls were strong enough to support heavy cannon on top and allow for space for cannons below, too.

According to our self-guided tour, over 21.5 million locally-made bricks were used in the building of Fort Pickens, and skilled slaves from New Orleans were brought to Pensacola Island to construct the fort.  Ironically the only time the fort saw action was during the Civil War when the Union forces held this fort (that the US government built using slave labor) during the entire war as they faced off with Confederate forces on the mainland. 

Three acres of open ground in the center of the fort once provided space to quarter and drill troops. About 850 men from the 3rd Infantry and 1st and 2nd Artillery regiments camped here in September, 1861, according to the literature we received. 

Parts of the old fort appear to be built into bluffs with look-out areas on top of the outside walls.  The other three folks in my group scrambled eagerly to the top of the walls where they took advantage of photo opportunities.


Patty and Dave at Fort Pickens



Me with my feet firmly planted on Mother Earth peering at tunnels through fort.



View of one section of the fort from high vantage point

Ricky climbed a lookout tower manned by a Park Service employee in order to get this great view.

To read more about Fort Pickens, click Here.

Fort Pickens is also famous for being one of the forts where Apache tribal members were held, including the Apache warrior, Geronimo, in 1887. 



Geronimo

Born in 1829, Geronimo lived in western New Mexico when this region was still a part of Mexico. Geronimo was a Bedonkohe Apache that married into the Chiricahuas. The murder of his mother, wife and children by soldiers from Mexico in 1858 forever changed his life and the lives of settlers in the southwest. He vowed at this point to kill as many white men as possible and spent the next thirty years making good on that promise.

Geronimo was a medicine man and not a chief of the Apache. However, his visions made him indispensable to the Apache chiefs and gave him a position of prominence with the tribe.

In the mid 1870's the government moved Native Americans onto reservations, and Geronimo rebelled against this forced removal and fled with a band of followers. He spent the next 10 years on reservations and raiding with his band. They raided across New Mexico, Arizona and northern Mexico. His exploits became highly chronicled by the press and he became the most feared Apache.

Geronimo and his band were eventually captured at Skeleton Canyon in 1886. These Apache were then shipped by rail to Florida.  All of Geronimo's band was to be sent to Fort Marion in St. Augustine. However, a few business leaders in Pensacola, Florida petitioned the government to have Geronimo himself sent to Fort Pickens.

They claimed that Geronimo and his men would be better guarded at Fort Pickens than at the overcrowded Fort Marion. However, an editorial in a local newspaper congratulated a congressman for bringing such a great tourist attraction to the city.

On October 25, 1886, 15 Apache warriors arrived at Fort Pickens. Geronimo and his warriors spent many days working hard labor at the fort in direct violation of the agreements made at Skeleton Canyon. Eventually the families of Geronimo's band were returned to them at Fort Pickens, and then they all moved on to other places of incarceration.

The city of Pensacola was sad to see Geronimo the tourist attraction leave. In one day he had over 459 visitors with an average of 20 a day during the duration of his captivity at Fort Pickens.

Unfortunately, the proud Geronimo was reduced to a sideshow spectacle. He lived the rest of his days as a prisoner. He visited the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904 and made money signing autographs and pictures.  Geronimo eventually died in 1909 at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

(Source of above information about Geronimo: Geronimo and Fort Pickens: An Unwilling Tourist Attraction, by Martin Kelly, About.com Guide)  Click here for original article.

"I was born on the prairies where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were no enclosures."

                                                                                     ~ Geronimo