Fort Picolata

{{Infobox military installation | name = Fort Picolata | ensign = | ensign_size = | native_name = | partof =  | location = Northwest of St. Augustine, Florida, on east bank of the St. Johns River | nearest_town = | country = United States | image = Plan of Fort Picolata.jpg | alt = | caption = Plan of Fort Picalata on St. Johns River | image2 = | alt2 = | caption2 = | type = | coordinates = {{coord|29|55|23|N|81|36|03|W|display=inline,title}} | gridref = | image_map = | image_mapsize = | image_map_alt = | image_map_caption = | pushpin_map = USA Florida#USA | pushpin_mapsize = 0 | pushpin_map_alt = | pushpin_map_caption = Location of Fort Picolata | pushpin_relief = | pushpin_image = | pushpin_label = | pushpin_label_position = | pushpin_mark = | pushpin_marksize = | ownership =  | built = 1734, rebuilt 1755 | used = {{End date|1740}} | builder = Spanish Army ''(Ejército de Tierra)'' | materials = Originally pine log palisade and blockhouse, rebuilt with coquina shell rock | height = 32 ft. | length =  | fate = | condition = Only traces remain | battles = | events = Burned by Indian allies of James Oglethorpe in 1740 | current_commander =  | past_commanders = | garrison = Spanish Army troops (1700s) <br> U.S. Army troops (1800s) | occupants =  | website = | footnotes =  }}

'''Fort Picolata''' (Spanish: '''Fuerte Picolata''') was an 18th-century Spanish fort on the east bank of the St. Johns River, about eighteen miles from St. Augustine (San Agustín), the capital of Spanish Florida (La Florida). Lying on the old trail to the Spanish province of Apalachee in western Florida, Fort Picolata and its sister outpost, Fort San Francisco de Pupo, controlled all traffic at the ferry crossing where the river narrows considerably.<ref name="Torres-Reyes1972">{{cite book |last=Torres-Reyes |first=Ricardo |title=The British Siege of St. Augustine in 1740: Castillo de San Marcos National Monument (Historic Resource Study) |year=1972 |publisher=National Technical Information ServicThis |url=https://archive.org/stream/historicresource00reye#page/7/mode/2up/search/pupo |page=7}}</ref> This natural pass was called "Salamatoto" by the Indians. The first defense works at the site, built soon after 1700 as an outpost of the military defensive network of St. Augustine, were little more than a sentry box surrounded by a palisade.<ref name="Goggin1951">{{cite journal |last=Goggin |first=John M. |title=Fort Pupo: A Spanish Frontier Outpost |journal=The Florida Historical Quarterly |date=October 1951 |volume=30 |issue=2 |url=https://palmm.digital.flvc.org/islandora/object/ucf%3A22343|access-date=15 June 2018 |publisher=Florida Historical Society|pages=140–142}}</ref> According to the archaeologist Carl D. Halbirt, fort Picolata and fort San Francisco de Pupo were "hexagonal wooden towers 16 ft. high and enclosed by a hexagram palisade", but they were "dilapidated" by 1737. Both forts were rebuilt somewhat more substantially in 1738 as 30-ft. high by 16-ft. square wooden towers with machicolation enclosed in an 8-ft. high palisade. They were destroyed in the War of Jenkins' Ear (1739–1744). Fort Picolata was rebuilt in 1755 as a coquina stone tower 2½ stories high and enclosed by a palisade.<ref name="Halbirt2004">{{cite journal |last1=Halbirt |first1=Carl D. |title=La Ciudad de San Agustín: A European Fighting Presidio in Eighteenth-Century La Florida |journal=Historical Archaeology |date=September 2004 |volume=38 |issue=3 |page=38 |doi=10.1007/BF03376652}}</ref>

==History== Tensions had been growing between the Spanish and the British after James Moore, the governor of Carolina, invaded La Florida in 1704 and 1706.<ref name="Goggin1951" /> Fort Picolata, along with Fort Pupo on the opposite side of the St. Johns, was built in 1734 by order of Governor Francisco del Moral y Sánchez in anticipation of more attacks by the English and their Indian allies.<ref name="Weber1992">{{cite book|last=Weber|first=David J. |title=The Spanish Frontier in North America|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KOPdX2qaVrkC&pg=PA180|year=1992|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-05917-5|page=180}}</ref>

When Gen. Oglethorpe, the governor of the British Province of Georgia, invaded Florida in late December 1739 and early January 1740 with his force of Scottish Highlanders and Indian allies, the Indians captured and burned Fort Picolata; Oglethorpe then laid siege to St. Augustine. The Spanish rebuilt the fort in 1755.<ref name="Chatelaine1941">{{cite journal |last= Chatelain |first=Verne E. |title=Spanish Contributions in Florida to American Culture |journal=The Florida Historical Quarterly |date=January 1941 |volume=19 |issue=3 |pages=156, 221 |url=https://palmm.digital.flvc.org/islandora/object/ucf%3A22343 |publisher=Florida Historical Society}}</ref><ref name="Sastre1998">{{Cite book |last=Sastre |first=Cecile-Marie |title=Picolata on the St. Johns: St. Augustine's river outpost |publisher=The Florida State University College of Arts and Sciences |year=1998 |isbn= |pages=4}}</ref> Coquina stone for building the fortification was transported to the river crossing at Picolata, where the ''El Camino Real'' (The Royal Road) to the interior crossed the St. Johns River.<ref name="Parker1999">{{cite book |last1=Parker |first1=Susan R. |title=Second Century of Settlement in Spanish St. Augustine, 1670–1763 |year=1999 |publisher=Gainesville, Florida |pages=150–151 |url=https://archive.org/details/secondcenturyofs00park/page/150/mode/2up?q=picolata}}</ref> There is no historical record that its sister fort, Fort San Francisco de Pupo, was ever rebuilt by the Spanish.<ref name="Goggin1951156">{{cite journal |last= Goggin |first=John M. |title=Fort Pupo: A Spanish Frontier Outpost |journal=The Florida Historical Quarterly |date=October 1951 |volume=30 |issue=2 |url=https://palmm.digital.flvc.org/islandora/object/ucf%3A22343|access-date=15 June 2018 |publisher=Florida Historical Society|pages=140–142, 156}}</ref>

In a letter to the Spanish king Philip V dated January 31, 1740 (O.S.), Governor Montiano wrote that forts Picalata [sic] and Pupo "were constructed solely for the purpose of defending and sheltering from the continual attacks of Indian allies of the English, the mails that go to and come from Apalachee."<ref name="Montiano1909">{{cite book|last=De Montiano|first=Manuel |title=Letters of Montiano: Siege of St. Agustine [sic]|url=https://archive.org/details/lettersofmontian01mont|year=1909|publisher=Georgia Historical Society|location=Savannah, Georgia|page=[https://archive.org/details/lettersofmontian01mont/page/39 39] }}</ref> When the British acquired Florida after the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1763, they soon recognized the value of Fort Picolata as part of the defenses of St. Augustine, and continued to maintain a garrison there as the Spanish had done. Important congresses between British colonial officials and the Indians took place at Picolata in 1765 and 1767.<ref name="Hoffman2002">{{cite book|last=Hoffman|first=Paul E. |title=Florida's Frontiers|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5xS7FoD3cSAC&pg=PA213|year=2002|publisher=Indiana University Press|isbn=0-253-10878-0|page=213}}</ref>

The first Picolata Conference, held November 15–18, 1765, between British officials and a delegation of Lower Creek and Seminole leaders, was organized by John Stuart, Indian superintendent of the Southern Department,<ref name="Gold1965">{{cite journal |last=Gold |first=Robert L. |title=The East Florida Indians under Spanish and English Control: 1763-1765 |journal=The Florida Historical Quarterly |date=July–October 1965 |volume=44 |issue=1–2 |url=http://palmm.digital.flvc.org/islandora/object/ucf%3A22402}}</ref> and summoned by Governor James Grant, to negotiate the boundaries between Indian and British lands.<ref name="Record1831">{{cite book|title=Record in the Case of the United States of America Versus Fernando M. Arredondo and Others|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2-mOHyvwyYgC&pg=PA60|year=1831|publisher=Duff Green|page=60}}</ref><ref name="HoffmannHorne2004">{{cite book|last= Braund|first=Kathryn E. Holland |editor=Nancy Everill Hoffmann |editor2=John C. Van Horne|title=America's Curious Botanist: A Tercentennial Reappraisal of John Bartram, 1699-1777|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=C9X4663giukC&pg=PA129|year=2004|publisher=American Philosophical Society|isbn=978-0-87169-249-8|page=129|chapter="The Congress Held in a Pavilion": John Bartram and the Indian Congress at Fort Picolata, East Florida}}</ref><ref name="Ward2017">{{cite book|last=Ward|first=Joseph P. |title=European Empires in the American South: Colonial and Environmental Encounters|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=u6YzDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT195|year=2017|publisher=University Press of Mississippi|isbn=978-1-4968-1220-9|page=195}}</ref> A treaty was signed at the congress, by which the Indians ceded over two million acres of land in northeast Florida to the British, stretching thirty-five miles from the coast westward past the St. Johns, and including all the tidewater land on the rest of the peninsula, extending up to ten miles inland from the coast.<ref name="Hoffman2002" /> The conference was attended by the American botanist and explorer John Bartram and his son William.<ref name="Bartram2002">{{cite book|last=Bartram|first=William |title=William Bartram on the Southeastern Indians|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=26s5vVEommMC&pg=PA4|year=2002|publisher=U of Nebraska Press|isbn=0-8032-6205-1|pages=4–5}}</ref>

In his ''Travels'', William Bartram wrote that he had visited Fort Picolata in April, 1774, and found it "dismantled and deserted". This is not what actually occurred; the misstatement may be attributed to the fact that it had been 18 years between his visit and the publication of his journal in 1792. In a report made in 1774 to his patron, Dr. John Fothergill (Fothergill was the agent in England for William's father, John Bartram),<ref name="GeorgiaH2015">{{cite web |title=Bartram's Travels |url=https://georgiahistory.com/education-outreach/online-exhibits/featured-historical-figures/william-bartram/the-bartram-trail/ |website=georgiahistory.com |publisher=Georgia Historical Society |access-date=14 August 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151221081820/http://georgiahistory.com/education-outreach/online-exhibits/featured-historical-figures/william-bartram/the-bartram-trail/ |archive-date=December 21, 2015 |date=2015}}</ref> Bartram wrote that he had stopped "at Picolata Fort. which I observed was newly repared [sic]."<ref name="Schafer2014">{{cite web |last=Schafer |first=Daniel L. |title=The Journal of John Bartram|url=http://www.unf.edu/floridahistoryonline/Bartram/December_1765/23dec1765.htm |website=www.unf.edu|publisher=University of North Florida |access-date=14 August 2018 |date=2014}}</ref>

In his memoirs, then first-lieutenant William T. Sherman notes being stationed at Picolata during the Second Seminole War, between 1841-1842. He stated that, at that time, Picolata consisted of two buildings, one "which had been built for a hospital, and the dwelling of a family named Williams."<ref name="Sherman1904">{{cite book |last1=Sherman |first1=William Tecumseh |title=Memoirs of General William T. Sherman |year=1904 |publisher=D. Appleton |location=27 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MXhhf3ZvSgEC&pg=PA27}}</ref>

==References== {{reflist}}

Category:Government buildings completed in 1737 San Francisco de Pupo Category:Pre-statehood history of Florida Category:1737 establishments in the Spanish Empire