A brief Overview of Pensacola's History

( Originally Published Mid 1930's )

Pensacola is as authentically Spanish in its pedigree and tradition as is St. Augustine, but with a much stronger infusion of the French influence, emanating from nearby Louisiana. Whether from these influences, from its comparative isolation from the newer Florida of the peninsula, or from something in its climate, with just enough of a tang to be invigorating in mid-winter and constant sea breezes which keep it from becoming enervating in mid-summer, Pensacola presents to the visitor a suggestion of gayety, as of a community whose people are completely satisfied that they are living in the best of all possible environments, and can afford not to take life too seriously. That is not to suggest indolence, but rather a cheerful energy which seems to pervade all of Pensacola's activities and which is building the city and its environs not only into one of the most beautiful communities to be found in or out of Florida, but into an increasingly important industrial and commercial center.

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Paralleling the civic progress of Pensacola is its growing importance as a center of activities of the United States Navy. In striking contrast to the Navy's ancient timber reserve along Santa Rosa Sound, a relic of the ancient days of wooden ships, is the daily spectacle of the squadrons of the air maneuvering over the bay, cadets undergoing training at the United States Naval Air Station, which has given to Pensacola one of its widely-known sobriquets, "The Annapolis of the Air."

Few cities anywhere have been planted in lovelier natural surroundings. Built on high ground which in some parts of the city reaches almost bluff-like proportions. Pensacola fronts on an almost completely land-locked arm of the Gulf of Mexico, a perfect natural deep-water harbor, large enough for all the navies of the world to maneuver in. Pensacola Bay, with its northerly and easterly arms, Escambia Bay and East Bay, cover 175 square miles. The Escambia River flows down from Alabama on the North; Perdido Bay and River, hardly a rifle shot from the city, separate Florida from Alabama on the West. From the North and West two important trunk line railroads enter the city, the Frisco and the Louisville & Nashville. The latter continues eastward across Florida where its lines connect with the westernmost terminal of the Seaboard Air line at River Junction.

North, east and west broad paved highways radiate from Pensacola. Through the heart of the city, over a new street named, appropriately, Cervantes, after the great Don Miguel who wrote "Don Quixote," runs the Old Spanish Trail, the great transcontinental highway which connects St. Augustine on the Atlantic with San Diego on the Pacific. It is an hour's run by motor to Mobile, half a day's journey through Biloxi and Gulfport to New Orleans. One can motor from Pensacola to the capitals of either Alabama or Mississippi and back between dawn and dark. Fine motor roads lead from Pensacola to the beaches. Pensacola Beach, on the Gulf shore of Santa Rosa Island, is reached by a toll bridge across Santa Rosa Sound. Opened in 1932, its accessibility draws motorists by the thousands on week-ends and holidays from a hundred or more miles, Winter and Summer. The waters of the Gulf are seldom too cool for comfortable bathing, though there are winter days when the air temperature is low enough to make a bathing suit uncomfortable wear on the beach. An older and locally more popular resort is Gulf Beach, to the west of the harbor entrance.

Historically, Pensacola challenges St. Augustine's claim to being the site of the first white settlement in what is now the United States. The relation between the two is like that between Roanoke Island and Jamestown. Sir Walter Raleigh planted his Roanoke colony in 1587, twenty years before the Jamestown settlers landed; but the Roanoke colony vanished while the others made a permanent settlement. Just so, in 1559, twenty-eight years before Roanoke, Don Tristan de Luna landed at Pensacola with 2,000 followers, with the intention of establishing a colony. But a hurricane destroyed some of the vessels' heavy supplies for the new colony, the day after they landed, and after less than two years of hardships the 500 survivors abandoned the colony and sailed back to Spain. It was six years later, in 1565, that Menendez planted the first permanent settlement at St. Augustine.

That first attempt at colonization on what the Spanish called the Bay of Santa Maria was the only attempt of Spain to gain a foothold on the north shore of the Gulf of Mexico for nearly 140 years. Secure in their possession of Mexico, they felt safe from aggressions from the unsettled North. But when the French, coming down the Mississippi in the trail of the discoveries of LaSalle and Pere Marquette, began to plant settlements which threatened the Spanish hold on the Gulf Coast, an expedition from Mexico under Andres de Arriola set forth in 1698 to plant another colony on Santa Maria Bay. They named the settlement Pensacola from an Indian tribe which inhabited the vicinity. They built a fort of logs to which was given the name San Carlos de Asturias, located about where the restored fort of that name, forming a part of Fort Barrancas, now stands as one of the historic spots of Pensacola.

The French arrived at the Bay two months later, but finding the Spaniards in possession retired to Biloxi. In 1718, however, France sent an expedition which took the Spanish colony by surprise. All of its inhabitants were captured and shipped to Havana. On the arrival of these ships with their Spanish prisoners at Havana, the governor general ordered the crews seized and imprisoned. Then manning them with Spanish crews, sailing under the French flag, he sent to Pensacola an overwhelming force that drove out the French and reestablished Spanish dominion. But this was short-lived, for before the year was over an expedition had come from Mobile and left, on the site of Fort San Carlos, reduced to ashes, this inscription:

"In the year 1719, on the 18th day of September, Monsieur Desuade de Champmeslin, commander of the squadron of His Most Christian Majesty, took this place by force of arms, as well as the island of Santa Rosa."

Under the treaty of peace between France and Spain in 1723 Pensacola Bay was again restored to Spain. In rebuilding their colony the Spanish, with keen remembrance of the French raids from the landward side, established their town and fort on the western end of Santa Rosa Island, near where Fort Pickens now stands. But a hurricane in 1754 swept away the little town, and the Spanish rebuilt on the site of the present city.

When Florida became an English possession in 1763 Pensacola was made the capital of West Florida, the British claims extending from the Chattahoochee River to the Mississippi and northward beyond the site of what is now Montgomery, Alabama. The town became the commercial and political headquarters of all that region, the center of the trade with the Indians. The town which the British took over consisted of forty huts, thatched with palmetto leaves in the Indian style. The new owners laid out the plan which the Pensacola of today closely follows. The main street, named Palafox now, was called George Street and at the top of Gage Hill, named for General Gage, who was then in command at Boston and whose name has come down in history because of his part in the Revolutionary War, they built Fort George.

Isolated as it was from the British colonies to the Northeast, Florida did not join them in the Revolution; but in 1779, when Spain had joined France in the war against Great Britain, the Spanish, then in possession of Louisiana, sent an expedition by land and sea and again, on May 8, 1781, Pensacola became a Spanish city. Spain held its recaptured possessions with such a weak hand that in the war of 1812 the British, with whom the Spanish were allied in the fighting against Napoleon, openly used the town of Pensacola as a base of operations, inciting the Indians against the United States.

It was this that brought Pensacola and Florida to the attention of General Andrew Jackson and, by his expedition undertaken on his own responsibility, to call the Spanish government to account for such a breach, brought General Jackson to the knowledge of the English and Spanish. After driving out the English quartered here, and providing that the hostile Indians, who had operated from here, should be hunted down, he moved on to bring greater discomfiture to the British in the Battle of New Orleans. He seized Pensacola again four years later, on the pretext that the Spanish were stirring up the Seminoles, against whom he had led an expedition, and for a year and a half the city was under a provisional government having no authority back of it but the personal dictatorship of General Jackson. There was another short interval when the town was returned to Spain, but the cession of Florida to the United States in 1821 put an end to Spanish rule on Pensacola Bay.

Many of the present day inhabitants of Pensacola, including leaders in business and civic affairs and of social prominence, are proud of their descent from the Spanish settlers of the 18th century. There is also a considerable strain of French blood, tracing from those early colonial days, among the old families of Pensacola.

The strategic position of Pensacola harbor as a naval base and its nearness to large supplies of important ship building timber led the United States Army and Navy to take early steps to fortify the approaches to the harbor. The Federal Navy Yard was established. It is still technically the United States Navy Yard, but ship-building operations were suspended long ago. No attempt was made to restore the ruins of Fort San Carlos, but the newer fort, named by the Spanish Barrancas, was enlarged and its garrison and armament strengthened. Guarding the entrance to the harbor, the United States built Fort Pickens, at the westerly tip of Santa Rosa Island, where the Spaniards had once attempted to establish their settlement, and Fort McRae, directly opposite at the end of the peninsula east of Gulf Beach.

The first actual fighting on Florida soil during the war between the states took place here when, two days after the secession of Florida, a hastily organized volunteer force of  secessionists seized the Navy Yard, Fort Barrancas and Fort McRae. They did not succeed in seizing Fort Pickens, which has the distinction of being the only Federal military post in the South over which the Stars and Stripes flew continuously from 1861 to 1865. The mainland shore from the Navy Yard to Fort McRae was further fortified by the Confederate forces with nineteen batteries of artillery, which bombarded Fort Pickens unsuccessfully. Early in 1862 the Confederates surrendered the fortifications to a Federal Army which approached from the land side, after first burning the Navy Yard and the saw mills. The Federal forces remained in possession of Pensacola to the end of the war.

The history of Pensacola is one of the most turbulent and colorful chapters in the American saga. Few mementos remain of those earliest troublous times, except the four ancient cannons which stand at the four corners of Lee Square, in the center of the city on the site of old Fort George, which the Spanish renamed Fort Michael. Two of the guns are Spanish, one of them bearing the arms of King Charles II; another is French and the fourth bears the arms of King George I of England.

Pensacola is proud of its military and naval history, and proudest of all of its Naval Air Station. Established in 1914, this school for Navy fliers has trained nearly 5,000 of the most efficient aviators in the world. The station is almost a city in itself, occupying, with its landing fields, nearly 10,000 acres centered around the old Navy Yard. It is a beautifully laid out, miraculously neat community, in which more than 3,000 Navy officers with their families, cadets in training, and enlisted men of the Navy are housed in modern, attractive quarters and upto-date barracks. Here 700 flying students are constantly in training. Some of them come from the Naval Academy at Annapolis. An Ensign who has served two years with the Fleet may, at his own request, be sent to Pensacola as a student. Nearly all of the rest are University graduates who have served in the Reserve Officers Training Corps while in college and who want to take up flying. The personnel under training includes also officers in the Marine Corps and the Coast Guard as well as the Navy, and enlisted men of all three services.

The majority of the aviators who man the flying clippers of the Pacific and Pan-American services, the men who are pioneering the new trans-Atlantic routes, got their training here at Pensacola. They are reserve officers of the United States Navy, who can be called back into service whenever their country needs them. Among them, these graduates of Pensacola constitute the nation's first line of defense in case of a foreign war. They are the pick of the young men of America. No flying cadet is accepted unless he can pass the most rigid tests of scholarship and come clean under the most searching investigation of his moral character and integrity. He must be 100% perfect physically, and he must demonstrate an aptitude as well as an inclination for aviation before he can be enrolled as a student aviator.

The accepted cadet who has passed all these tests is sent to the Navy air base at Miami for a month of elimination flight training. If he comes through that satisfactorily, he comes to Pensacola for a year's course which includes experience in training landplanes and seaplanes, scouts, fighters, patrol boats, and torpedo planes. The phases of training include primary and precision work, formation, cross country, acrobatics, blind flying, radio, catapulting, gunnery, camera gunnery and bombing. In addition the ground school covers a broad scope of subjects including navigation, engines, aircraft construction and overhaul, instruments, military and naval science and radio.

While undergoing this training at Pensacola the Cadet is paid $105 per month and is supplied with uniforms, quarters and books. He is covered by a $10,000 life insurance policy which is paid for by the government during his active duty. Many opportunities for recreation are offered such as football, baseball, handball, basketball, bowling, swimming, tennis, fishing, hunting, library, boxing, boating, motion pictures, dramatic and musical societies.

Upon graduation from Pensacola, the Aviation Cadet is sent to flight duty in the status of a junior Naval Officer with an aviation unit of the United States Fleet for three years, during which time he is paid $155 per month. During this time he will do duty aboard the large airplane carriers and other aviation units and will take extended cruises with the United States Fleet. At the end of his period he receives as a cash bonus $1,500, and a commission as Ensign in the United States Naval Reserve. He is then released to inactive duty. He is eligible to continue flying activities at the Naval Reserve Aviation Base nearest his home with subsequent promotion to higher rank. He is paid a retainer pay for maintaining his proficiency.

When it is considered that several thousand young men of such caliber and qualities have spent a year each in Pensacola it is not surprising that the city has acquired the sobriquet of "Mother-in-law of the Navy." Indeed, an actual shortage of eligible young women is reported. When a boy in his early twenties has finally got his wings and the assurance of something like a permanent livelihood, the first thing he usually wants to do is to get married. Many of them, to be sure, marry the sweethearts of their college days, girls from all parts of the nation; but a high percentage of them marry girls they have met in Pensacola.

The air transport lines keep a close eye on the students at Pensacola, and the demand for their services is frequently greater than the supply; for no young man comes through this course unless he knows and has proved that he knows everything there is to know about aviation. When he comes out he has had 300 hours in the air in land planes, sea planes, flying boats, and heavy bombers. He is a master of navigation. He can fly blind by instruments and follow a radio beam. He can receive and send in Morse code. He can take a plane and its engine and equipment apart down to the last screw and put them together again. He knows what to do in any emergency. He can lead or follow a flight in squadron formation. Whatever the most rigid qualifications for an aviator may be as of the date of his graduation, he has them. And, in addition, he has proved himself a man of character and courage.

In addition to training pilots, the Navy Air Station at Pensacola trains enlisted men for the necessary ground work without which airplanes could not fly. These, too, are picked men, skilled young mechanics who are taught a11 that there is to know about the servicing and repairing of planes and engines. Most of these are absorbed into the Navy and Marine Corps as warrant or non-commissioned officers, but like the cadets themselves, these Navy-trained men are in demand by builders and operators of commercial aircraft.

The sight of squadrons of brightly colored planes flying in formation over Pensacola and its adjacent waters is one not to be forgotten. There are few causalities among the student flyers. When a ship gets out of control it usually manages to come down in the water, where swift Navy patrol boats are always on the watch to rush to the rescue. As essential part of the training is, of course, parachute descents, and here the watchfulness of the boat patrol is especially necessary.

Grounded in shoal water a mile or so off the entrance to Pensacola harbor is the wreck of the old battleship Massachusetts, its rusting steel turrets standing high above the water as a forlorn monument to the international naval disarmament program agreed upon by the nations of the world at President Harding's Peace Conference of 1921. The United States, almost alone among those who participated in the conference and signed the agreement to sink some of their capital ships, kept its promise. The Massachusetts was one of the victims. It was anchored off Pensacola to serve as a target and was sunk by high explosive shells from long-range rifled guns of the railroad artillery, which the Army had been itching to try, but had had no real chance in the World War. Around the hulk the winds and waves have piled up the sand into a shoal that is almost an island, and which somehow is such an attractive lure for fish that Pensacola sportsmen agree that Battleship Shoal is the best fishing ;round for miles around.

Pensacola is a pleasant city to live in. In the older section, especially along the highways skirting the bay to the southward, many of the homes are built in the true old Spanish style, around a patio or open courtyard, and the hospitality of the hidalgos of old Spain is dispensed within their walls. To the northward an interesting new residential section has been developed by the construction of the Beach Scenic Highway, extending several miles along the crest of the high banks of Escambia Bay, enabling the householder not only to have a broad, inspiring view across the water but to maintain his own private boat landing or fishing pier at the foot of the bluff.

With the extensive safe waters of the three bays at its door, one of Pensacola's most popular sports is yachting. Both sailing craft and motor boat regattas which attract entries from all parts of the seaboard are held here at seasonal intervals. Visitors are attracted to Pensacola the year around because of its "air-conditioned" climate. Surrounded by salt water, its temperatures run 6 to 10 degrees cooler in Summer and 4 to 8 degrees warmer in Winter than only a few miles inland.

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