Sand in the Coffee, Vol. 76: the fort you can see from johnson beach
Geronimo — the actual Geronimo — spent almost two years locked up in a fort you can see from Johnson Beach.
That’s not a tall tale from a bar stool. Walk Johnson Beach toward the east end and look across the Pass: that low brick shape on the far point is Fort Pickens, finished in 1834, and among the many things that happened inside it, the federal government held Geronimo there in the late 1880s. He got roughly the same Gulf view people are currently paying several hundred dollars a night for. Involuntarily, but still. He did almost two years. You can spare two hours.
This column is for the fourth or fifth day of a beach week — the one where somebody in your group is sunburned, somebody is bored, and somebody just said “we could do a thing today.” The fort day is the thing. Here’s how to do it right, on both sides of the state line.
The pass trick nobody tells you
Fort Pickens and Johnson Beach are the same park. Both are pieces of Gulf Islands National Seashore, and the vehicle pass — about $25 a carload — is good for seven days at every entrance. So if you already paid to park at Johnson Beach this week, keep that receipt in the glove box: Fort Pickens is already paid for. That one fact turns the fort from “eh, admission” into “it’s free, get in the car.”
The catch is geography. The fort sits about a half-mile from Johnson Beach as the pelican flies — and about an hour as the minivan drives, because there’s no bridge across the Pass. You go up 292, through Pensacola, down through Gulf Breeze, over to Pensacola Beach, then west down Fort Pickens Road until the condos give up and it’s nothing but dunes. That last stretch is the prettiest drive-to-nowhere in the county. Don’t rush it.
How to actually do Fort Pickens
Go in the morning. I mean it. The fort is a few million bricks that have been sitting in the Gulf sun since Andrew Jackson was alive, and by 1 p.m. it holds heat like a pizza oven with a gift shop. Get there by 9, ramble while the shade still works.
Let the kids off the leash a little. The place is a maze of arches, tunnels, stairways, and gun batteries, and wandering it is the entire point. There’s no velvet rope experience here — it’s the good kind of historic site, the kind you climb on. Real shoes, though. Flip-flops versus 190-year-old brick is a losing matchup, and the brick is undefeated.
Stay for the beach. The sand at the Fort Pickens end is the same sugar you came for, with a fraction of the towels, plus a fishing pier where somebody is always pulling up something worth walking over to look at. Pack the cooler like it’s a beach day, because it secretly is one.
Watch the clock in August. The 3 o’clock storm does not care about your itinerary, and a brick fort full of iron is not where you want to be when the sky goes purple. Check the radar and the flags before you leave, do the fort in the morning, and be somewhere with a roof and a menu by mid-afternoon. That’s not caution, that’s just the August schedule.
The Orange Beach side has its own fort, and it’s a better story
Drive the other direction — through Orange Beach and Gulf Shores, then west on 180 until the road flat runs out of Alabama — and you hit Fort Morgan, standing guard over the mouth of Mobile Bay. This is where the Battle of Mobile Bay happened in August of 1864, which makes this month the 162nd anniversary. It’s the fort Admiral Farragut was looking at when he said “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” — the torpedoes in question being what we’d now call mines, which the Gulf has thankfully stopped stocking.
Admission is cash-register money, not theme-park money. The drive is about twenty-some miles past Gulf Shores, long and straight with water winking at you from both sides, and the fort at the end is bigger, emptier, and moodier than you expect. Locals will tell you the move is late afternoon: do the ramparts, then stay for sunset over the bay mouth, because it’s one of the best free shows in Baldwin County. There’s also a car ferry that crosses to Dauphin Island from the fort — a genuinely fun way to make a loop of it — but check the schedule before you build your day around it, because the ferry answers to the weather, not to you.
The third fort, for the full local flex
Here’s the one for your back pocket. There used to be a third fort in this triangle — Fort McRee, on the very eastern tip of Perdido Key itself. The Gulf and a century of hurricanes took nearly all of it; what’s left is rubble and foundations out past the far end of Johnson Beach, reachable by a long, long walk or by boat, which is why the only people you’ll see out there are anglers and boat-picnic people who like having a mile of sand to themselves. You don’t need to make the trek. You just need to point east from your beach chair and say “there were three forts guarding this pass, you know” and enjoy being the most interesting person under the umbrella.
The shape of the day
Storm-day insurance, changeover-Saturday escape, or sunburn amnesty — the fort day fits all three. Morning at Pickens with the pass you already bought, or late afternoon at Morgan with a sunset chaser. Water bottles, real shoes, a hat, and one person willing to read the plaques out loud in a dramatic voice. Every group has one. It’s usually me.
— Chris
