Castillo de San Marcos

When Spanish explorers first landed in the area known today as St. Augustine in 1565, they hardly prioritized military defense. But not long after the Spanish settlement arose, the need for fortification made itself painfully known. In 1586, Sir Francis Drake arrived on the shores of Florida with one goal: burn the settlements at St. Augustine.

Drake proved devastatingly effective, reducing the settlement to ash. The Spanish survivors were not swayed though and soon rebuilt, adding wood forts guarding the settlement.

Over the following years, wood forts proved woefully inadequate against invaders looking to loot St. Augustine. After English buccaneer Robert Searle sacked the city using Spanish supply ships to avoid fortifications, the leaders of the Spanish Empire finally ordered a permanent, stone fort built at St. Augustine.

That stone fort would become Castillo de San Marcos. Completed in 1695, Castillo de San Marcos was a massive improvement over its wooden predecessors. And, it soon had a chance to prove its superiority.

In 1702, Carolina Governor James Moore sought to capture St. Augustine from the Spanish once and for all, and set out on an expedition to siege the city.

In November of that year, over a thousand locals crammed into the safety of Castillo de San Marcos for nearly two straight months as the siege took place. This time, the Spanish held the region. Though Moore burnt the city on his retreat, the Spanish rebuilt quickly afterwards, and the new stone fortress proved its might.

Castillo de San Marcos proved so effective in its defense that when it finally fell into British hands, it was through treaties. The Treaty of Paris in 1763 gave the British control over the fort, but this would be short-lived. Just twenty years later, as part of their loss in the American Revolution, the British ceded the Florida territory back to Spain.

During the American Revolution, the British used the fort as a military prison and maintained it rather well. But the Spanish found the rest of the city much different than they’d left it, devoid of many Spanish settlers and teeming with British loyalists.

Soon, the new United States pressured the Spanish to sell Florida to them, which they did in 1819, and Castillo de San Marcos became property of the US.

Though it was over 100 years old at this point, Castillo de San Marcos was far from retired. After the US acquired the fort, they renamed it Fort Marion and used it as a prison during the Second Seminole War. Skulls of Native Americans who died during there were kept by the fort doctor, Frederick Weedon.

Some prisoners managed to escape and share tales of their horrid treatment, inflaming the Seminole’s fighting spirit and prolonging the war. The war ended in 1842, but there was one more war the old Spanish fort needed to see.

When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, the fort was quickly annexed by the Confederacy after Florida seceded from the U.S. One Confederate militia, the St. Augustine Blues, was formed at the fort in August of 1861, but in March of 1862, the USS Wabash entered the city’s harbor to find it emptied of all Confederates.

The US took the fort back without a shot fired and ended the life of Castillo de San Marcos as a military fortification. But the U.S. military wasn’t quite ready to let go of the fort yet.

From the 1870’s onward, Castillo de San Marcos was a military prison, used to house Native Americans including Chief White Horse of the Kiowa and Chief Grey Beard of the Cheyenne. Countless Native Americans would die at the prison during this time.

The fort’s use as a Native American prison camp continued until it was reused as a prison for army deserters. But, the fort’s time as a prison soon came to a close. Castillo de San Marcos finally shuttered in 1900, after 205 years of operation.