Advanced Redoubt at Gulf Islands National Seashore in Florida

OPERATING HOURS

Advanced Redoubt is not open to the public, but there is plenty to see from the outside. However, Fort Barrancas (the larger fort) and the Fort Barrancas Visitor Center at Gulf Islands National Seashore are only open one Saturday each month in May, June, July, and August from 9 AM to 4 PM. If you must go through the hassle of entering Pensacola Naval Air Station as a civilian, you are wasting your time visiting Advanced Redoubt unless you can see Fort Barrancas as well. For the current schedule, visit the National Park Service’s Fort Barrancas Area web page.

GETTING THERE

The Advanced Redoubt is located within Pensacola Naval Air Station. Tourists and those not employed by the Department of Defense must enter through the west gate on Blue Angel Parkway between 9 AM and 3 PM. All visitors 18 and older need an ID to get onto the base. A driver’s license will suffice unless it is not compliant with the Real ID Act. Those with a non-compliant license must have a valid passport or other form of identification. Foreign nationals must be accompanied by a citizen of the United States.

Your vehicle is subject to search, so leave your guns and illegal drugs at home. Though I was not asked for proof of automobile insurance and vehicle registration when I visited the fort, I have been asked for these documents when entering other military bases, so be sure to have these with you as well.

Per the Naval Air Station Pensacola website:

• No weapons allowed (to include Concealed Weapon Permit holders)
• No backpacks / coolers allowed outside of the vehicle (diaper bags or medically required bags are acceptable and subject to search)
• No alcoholic beverages allowed
• No drones allowed (countermeasures will be taken)
• Persons with felony convictions are not authorized base access
• No visitors with boats and boat trailers
• All vehicles and personnel are subject to security searches and background checks

Once you enter the base, drive straight on Blue Angel Parkway until it forks, at which point bare left on Taylor Road. You will first pass the Fort Barrancas Visitor Center on the right. Fort Barrancas is on a hill behind the Visitor Center, though you cannot see it from the road. Advanced Redoubt is located a little farther down on the left—you can’t miss it.

SELF-GUIDED TOUR OF ADVANCED REDOUBT

Visitors to Advanced Redoubt are only allowed to walk around the exterior of the fort. There is a self-guided tour set up with numbered posts located at various places on the grounds, and a printed brochure available at the Visitor Center describes the features (also available on the National Park Service Mobile App). There is plenty of useful information on this web page as well. You should be able to walk around the fort and read the information in less than 30 minutes.

Advanced Redoubt on the left and its counterscarp on the right, Gulf Islands National Seashore

FORT HISTORY

A redoubt is an enclosed fort usually built in an outlying area, sort of an outpost for soldiers sent to defend a strategic point. Faced with an overwhelming attack, this is a place where the soldiers can fall back to. The definition of redoubt is “a place of retreat.” Redoubts can be earthen, temporary structures, or in the case of Advanced Redoubt, a permanent structure made of brick or stone.

Fort Barrancas was built to protect the entrance of Pensacola Bay so that enemy forces could not attack the Pensacola Navy Yard (aka Warrington Navy Yard). However, there was still plenty of open land to the north of the fort, leaving the Navy Yard vulnerable to a land-based attack from the west. To counter this, another fort, Advanced Redoubt, was built to block the way. Defensive trenches were then dug to connect the two forts together. An enemy now approaching the Navy Yard by land would always be within range of the guns from one of these two forts, not to mention the men stationed in the trenches.

Map of Pensacola Bay defenses (rotated to a north orientation)

Construction on Advanced Redoubt started before the Civil War in 1845 but was not completed until after the war in 1870 (Barrancas was completed in 1844). Slaves were the labor force in the pre-war years, but hired craftsmen and laborers finished the project. It is interesting to note that the workmanship was superior during the slave era. This is because the skilled slaves could not leave the job, and the same men worked on the project year after year. Following the war, the turnover in the workforce was tremendous, and there was never any consistency in the quality of work. It didn’t take long for hired workers to realize that mosquitoes and Yellow Fever outbreaks sucked. Such was life in Florida.

The only time the Pensacola area forts saw any battle action was during the Civil War. As soon as Federal troops realized Florida’s secession from the Union was inevitable, they opted to abandon Fort Barrancas, Fort McRee, and Advanced Redoubt and retreat to Fort Pickens, which was determined to provide the best possibility for defense. Confederate troops under the command of General Braxton Bragg occupied the abandoned forts and took control of the Navy Yard on January 12, 1861, the same day that fighting broke out at Fort Sumter.

In September, a small force of Union soldiers attacked the Navy Yard without success. In response, Bragg sent one thousand men to attack the camp of the 6th New York Infantry and burned it to the ground. That provoked the guns at Fort Pickens to open up on the Confederate forts and the Navy Yard for two consecutive days in November. Fort McRee was heavily damaged. Advanced Redoubt was too far inland to be involved in any of this fighting, for the guns at Fort Pickens could barely reach Fort Barrancas, let alone a fort a few miles farther north.

The Confederates eventually abandoned Pensacola in May 1862 in an effort to shift troops to Mississippi and Tennessee. At this time, Union troops reoccupied all of the forts, the Navy Yard, and even the city of Pensacola.

The area did see action later in the war when on October 8, 1863, approximately two hundred Confederate troops attacked the black pickets (forward soldiers serving as sentinels) manning the trenches—they did not purposely intend to shoot at the white soldiers. This attack had little effect, and the Confederates retreated at the end of the day. On the 9th they attacked black pickets at Advanced Redoubt with the same results. That was the last time either of the forts was involved in the fighting.

Fort Barrancas and Advanced Redoubt, like all forts of their time, were masonry forts made of brick. Brick had no problem stopping a typical cannonball, for these did not travel with much velocity, nor were they very accurate, so the chance of blasting a hole in the fort wall by hitting the same spot over and over again was slim. However, rifled artillery shells were developed during the Civil War. Instead of round balls, rifled shells looked like large bullets and spun like a football when fired. This allowed them to travel faster and with more accuracy, and they could blast through a masonry wall in no time. Thus, masonry forts were obsolete by the end of the war. Some were fitted with concrete batteries, as was the case with Fort Pickens, some were converted into offices and training facilities, and some, like Advanced Redoubt, had concrete poured between the walls for reinforcement to prolong their use as defensive structures.

Fort Barrancas and Advanced Redoubt remained active until 1947. Both became part of the Gulf Islands National Seashore when it was created in 1971.

EXTERIOR FEATURES OF ADVANCED REDOUBT

When you visit Advanced Redoubt you will notice three distinct features of the fort: the fort itself, the dry moat, and the counterscarp and counterscarp gallery, the structure on the opposite side of the moat. The term counterscarp refers to the outer wall of this secondary structure, with the scarp being the outer wall of the actual fort. However, there is much more to the counterscarp than just a wall. There is a mini-fort called the counterscarp gallery behind the wall, and inside is a passageway wide enough so that soldiers have room to maneuver. Rifle ports in the counterscarp allow the soldiers to shoot at any enemy troops that enter the moat. Men could travel back and forth between the counterscarp gallery and the fort through underground passageways.

Counterscarp wall of Fort Barrancas’s Advanced Redoubt, Gulf Islands National Seashore

Advanced Redoubt’s counterscarp gallery with rifle ports (windows on the left side), Gulf Islands National Seashore

The top of the counterscarp gallery was covered with earth, and men could be stationed here as well. Should they be overrun, they could retreat into the gallery. The enemy’s next target would be the fort, but to get there they must enter the moat where they would be caught in a deadly crossfire of bullets. Furthermore, the larger windows at the far end (bricked up to keep out modern-day vandals in the photo below) are where artillery was installed that could shoot what is called canister—dozens of mini cannonballs designed to tear into people, similar to a shotgun blast.

View of Advanced Redoubt’s counterscarp, moat, and scarp, Gulf Islands National Seashore

Information on the crossfire directed at those in the moat

Advance Redoubt’s rifle ports, Gulf Islands National Seashore Florida

View out of one of Advanced Redoubt’s rifle ports, Gulf Islands National Seashore Florida

The only place that does not have a counterscarp is the side of the fort with the sally port (entrance) and drawbridge. Instead of being protected by men in a counterscarp gallery, the backside of the fort had a demibastion on each end that was fitted with Howitzers that could fire canister. Demibastions protruded further out from the main fort. If you were to stand just outside the entrance and looked left and right, you would see rifles and Howitzers pointed at you, which like the scarp and counterscarp arrangement, creates a crossfire.

Moat and drawbridge of Advanced Redoubt at Fort Barrancas, Gulf Islands National Seashore

View of the moat from the left side demibastion of Advanced Redoubt at Gulf Islands National Seashore in Florida

Once you explore the fort, you’ll realize that there was really no way to capture it other than through a siege, which was a long term harassing fire of artillery designed to pound away at the fort walls until either a breach was created or the soldiers inside ran out of food and supplies and had to surrender.

INNER FEATURES OF ADVANCED REDOUBT

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The following is written as if visitors are allowed inside the Advanced Redoubt, for it was written when tours of the interior were given by the National Park Service. As of 2025, such tours are no longer given.

Upon entering the fort through the sally port, you will find that you are not actually inside a building but outside in the fresh air on what is known as the parade ground. In this case the parade ground makes up the top level of the fort, and when it was active, dozens of cannon would have been mounted along the walls. Today, there are no cannon on display at Advanced Redoubt, but you can still see the places where they where once installed.

Parade ground and wall just inside Advanced Redoubt, Gulf Islands National Seashore

Gun mount for cannon on the top wall of Advanced Redoubt, Gulf Islands National Seashore

To get inside the fort to where the rifle ports are located, you must walk down stairs to the lower level. Here you will find an endless maze of passageways. There are no artillery or other exhibits inside, but you can get a look out of the rifle ports.

Looking out of a rifle port from within Advanced Redoubt at Fort Barrancas, Gulf Islands National Seashore in Florida

There are connector tunnels to the counterscarp gallery at two ends of the fort. One connector tunnel has a 3-foot high entrance. This was originally designed to be a drainage ditch, but for whatever reason it ended up being one of the entrances of the counterscarp gallery. The entrance at the other end is normal height.

Interior passageway of Advanced Redoubt, Gulf Islands National Seashore Florida

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