Fort Barrancas - Timeline

Timeline

The site of Fort Barrancas has been involved in numerous events and has changed names several times, depending on which country ruled in the region, over the past five centuries:

• 1559-1561: when Spanish Pensacola is first settled on Santa Rosa Island, the site was only a hilltop that overlooked the island;

• 1698: the Spanish construct Fort San Carlos de Austria;

• 1719: Fort San Carlos de Austria is completely destroyed by the French;

• 1763: now under British rule, Royal Navy Redoubt is constructed of earth & logs;

• 1787: now under Spanish rule (from 1781), the sea-level battery, Bateria de San Antonio, is built of masonry;

• 1787-1797: under Spanish rule, Fort San Carlos de Barrancas, a wooden and earthen structure is added on the hill-top bluff overlooking the battery;

• 1814: Fort San Carlos de Barrancas is demolished by the evacuating British as Andrew Jackson approaches;

• 1817: again under Spanish control, San Carlos de Barrancas is rebuilt;

• 1839-1844: now under U.S. rule (from 1821), the wooden hill-top structure is replaced with a massive brick fortress connected via tunnel to the battery (remodeled in 1838), with the entire site comprising Fort Barrancas;

• 1845-1869: the Advanced Redoubt is built 1400 ft (427 m) north of the fort;

• 1861: under Confederate control, Fort Barrancas is bombarded from Union-held Fort Pickens on Santa Rosa Island, with heaviest attacks on November 22–23 and January 7, 1862;

• 1862: in May, the site, and the City of Pensacola, are abandoned by Confederate troops (after the fall of New Orleans);

• 1870: The Pensacola and Fort Barrancas Railroad, an eight-mile line connecting Pensacola, Florida, with the fort, through Warrington and Woolsey, is constructed. The line will pass through several corporate ownerships before the rail link aboard Naval Air Station Pensacola is abandoned circa 1979 with track and bridges across several waterways removed.

• 1941-1947: Fort Barrancas is used by the U.S. Army as a signal station and small arms range until it is deactivated in 1947;

• 1960: on October 9, Fort San Carlos de Barrancas becomes an NHL landmark.

• 1966: Fort Barrancas Historical District (640 acres) enters the National Register of Historical Places, as district #66000263.
• 1971: Fort Barrancas becomes part of the Gulf Islands National Seashore managed by the U.S. National Park Service;

• 1978-1980: Fort Barrancas is restored during an 18-month project and opened to the public as a National Historic Landmark.

• 1989: Fort Barrancas is listed in A Guide to Florida's Historic Architecture, published by the University of Florida Press.