Day 29 April 2



One of the inside smaller guns



Jane standing next to the equipment needed to load a canon

The self destruct powder storage

Lots of load bearing arches



One of the big guns of the Civil War



Early gun around 1909, moves up to shoot over the wall



World War II gun could be electrically controlled

More arches

Today we explored Fort Pickens and the World War II gun emplacements.  Here is a quick history of the fort. The fort is a huge all brick construction with bricks shipped from the South and New England.  The New England Bricks are holding up better.  There is a 50 foot or so section of the fort missing due to a storage of gun powder accidentally going off, the rest of the fort is still intact.  A few examples of the guns are still in place saved from the scrap yard for museum pieces.  The bigger cannon could shoot 17 miles.  Geronimo was held at this fort for about a year before he was moved again.  The fort had a self destruct, with tunnels built into the main walls that held 2000 pounds of gun powder.  We crawled down one of the tunnels to the powder room at the end.  The entire fort could be demolished so an enemy could not occupy it.  The Fort is built on sand, so they used arches to hold the weight above and below ground. On the old parade grounds of the fort a battery was built to shoot modern guns in the early 1900s.  Later outside the Fort gun emplacements were built to protect the shore line from enemy ships for WW II.