Access to the museum is only from the West Gate off Blue Angel Parkway (1878 South Blue Angel Pkwy) of Naval Air Station Pensacola NOTE: Visitors (16 years and older) must present valid identification for entry. #GULF ISLANDS NATIONAL SEASHORE CAMPING FREE#Hours: Open daily from 9am to 5pm (closed Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas, New Year's Day) Admission: Free (additional fees each for IMAX movies, Blue Angels 4D Experience, and Flight Simulators) Our tour guide was a retired Korea/Vietnam-era naval aviator that not only gave us a technical history of the aircraft and their particular strengths and flaws, but also interweaved many personal and detailed stories of the men and women who flew the aircraft. You could make the case to guide yourself through the hangars as there are plenty of informative kiosks and interactive displays, but if you have the chance, we'd highly recommend hopping into one of the free guided tours. The whole of the west end is a kind of living museum of coastal defense innovation. The guns at Battery Langdon could hurl a 12" half-ton shell and hit a target 17 miles out to sea. The disappearing guns were designed to pop up from behind reinforced concrete walls, shoot 50lb shells, and hide again. The remains of the casemates are camouflaged by sand dunes. In 1898, the fort was upgraded with new concrete construction and giant disappearing cannons known as Battery Pensacola, of which remnants still remain.īetween Fort Pickens and the campgrounds, you can also walk around WWI and WWII-era gun batteries, each one bigger than the last. Across the inlet to Pensacola Bay lies Confederate Forts McRee and Barrancas with which Pickens battled during the Civil War in 1861. Several large cannons are still mounted on its walls, overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. A self-guided tour allows for mostly unrestricted exploration of this Third System fortress. Grievously, it was built by enslaved people to protect rights and freedoms that they themselves did not possess. If you have your bicycles, Fort Pickens Road has a dedicated bike lane its entire length within the preserve.īuilt from 21 million bricks manufactured in nearby Pensacola, Fort Pickens is a marvel of masonry construction. Nature trails extend from the campgrounds through the dunes on the north side of the campground and weave to the bayside shores. Just across Fort Pickens Road, low slung boardwalks wind through the dunes giving you easy access to white quartz sand and Gulf waters. Given the option, we'd choose any of the outer loop sites in the Fort Pickens Campground as much of the interior has been unnaturally freed from the shade and privacy that the surrounding coastal hammocks would ordinarily provide - but you can't beat the location. Group, RV, and tent sites are tucked conveniently in the dunes between the Gulf coast and Pensacola Bay on paved loops. Also worth noting, of our country’s ten national seashores, the Gulf Islands National Seashore is the largest at 137,000 acres, of which 80 percent are submerged lands.Įntrance Fee: $10/pedestrian, cyclist $20/private vehicle free with America Beautiful Pass or 4th Grade Every Kid in a Park Pass Spend some time visiting all of the sites between Gulf Islands National Seashore and Pensacola and you'll start connecting some pretty interesting historical dots that cross the centuries.
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