Is Fort Barrancas even a starfort? What, you really want to have this argument right now? Sure it is. As Nick Nolte said in The Mandalorian, I Have Spoken.

Two visits to Fort Barrancas are represented here: One in August of 2017 with my daughter Tori, and another the following April. I wouldn't bother to mention this except the 2017 visit took place on an overcast day, and the 2018 visit was on an extremely blue-skied, sunny day...and the difference in the pictures is pretty noticeable. Rest assured, I have blended images from these two visits together to be a reliably complete accounting of Fort Barrancas' charms: Please forgive any jarring juxtaposition.

A visit to Fort Barrancas is really a visit to two frightfully historic forts! The Spanish built the Batería de San Antonio to cover the entrance of Pensacola Bay at the end of the 18th century, and when the United States built their fort on the same hill in the 1840's, they did so directly behind the Spanish fortification...and instead of doing the standard thing, which was destroy the old fort to make room for the new, they repurposed the Spanish fort to serve as a water battery! Well done and admirably thrifty, Joseph G. Totten!

Fort Barrancas made for an extremely dreamy starfort visit. Its location (atop a hill), shape (kitefort?) and size (smallest "parade ground" physically possible, but with a warren of exciting tunnels) make it unique amongst American starforts, and everything has been lovingly maintained. The old Spanish fortification has been painted a startling white, which makes things squinty when you're visiting it in the bright Florida sunshine!

It was stiflingly hot when we visited in August of 2017, and there was a warning sign proclaiming "Black Flag Conditions" outside the park's small, but really excellent Visitor's Center/Gift Shop. Fort Barrancas is a non-outdoorsy person's dream, however, as much of the visit involved wandering through a bunch of dark, pleasantly cool tunnels and firing galleries. Stay out of the sun? No problem! The parade ground is minuscule, offering little opportunity for any actual parading!

Fort Barrancas is aboard NAS Pensacola, an active US Naval Air Station, so visitors do need to be lightly scrutinized by security as they drive onto the base.

Nearby is the Advanced Redoubt, built to defend the landward approach to Fort Barrancas, which will be dealt with in a different gallery...and the Naval Flight Museum is yet another incredibly delightful attraction on the air base, if you're partial to military aircraft, which I certainly am.

Okay, for those of us who don't know how this works, each of the images on this page is a thumbail of a full-sized image! Click on any to be taken to its page, where you will also find further scintillating observations about my visit to Fort Barrancas!

As is the case at most American starforts, there is a wealth of information regarding Fort Barrancas presented in a number of signs scattered about. Linx to pix of these signs are contained in this gallery on the pages with the pic of the location where these signs are posted, but just in case you're here for pictures of signs and not starforts, and don't have the patience to go sifting through my nonsense to get to those signpix, then here is a list of them: