Gulf shores national seashore2/14/2024 ![]() Signs warn motorists not to leave the road. Salty wind off the Gulf sends the fine sand blowing across the road like sugar coating. ![]() On certain nights, candlelight tours add an element of historical authenticity and eerie romance.Įast of Fort Pickens, between Pensacola Beach and Navarre Beach, the Opal Beach Area Gulf Islands National Seashore of Florida is less facilitating, but perhaps even more alluring with its uninterrupted stretches of wind-sculpted dunes rippling as far as the eye can see. Here, visitors can travel back in time through the archways and tunnels, to the escarpments, casements, bastions and cannon. The actual fort structure occupies the very western tip of the island. Wild flowers and sea grasses add color to the searing whiteness and sightseeing for bicyclists following a 2.2-mile bike trail. A Dune Nature Trail snakes through this sea- and wind-whipped environment that turns magnolias, pines and oaks into bonsai versions. Picnic shelters are found both on beach and bay. At Langdon Beach, battery remnants begin to crop up among the dunes. The island slims down as you enter the park, to let you glimpse views of both the Gulf and the bay. The massive brick fort and its ruins spread over the park's 1,742 acres. Tourists by the boatload would sail by in hopes of a glimpse of the mighty American Indian warrior. In later years, the fort gained attention when the government sent Geronimo and his band there for incarceration. While Rebel forces occupied Fort McRee on nearby Perdido Key and Fort Barrancas on the mainland, Federal troops moved into Fort Pickens, one of only three Union strongholds in Florida. During the Civil War, the Union and Confederacy divided Pensacola. The largest parcel lies within Fort Pickens at the west end of Pensacola Beach on Santa Rosa Island. National parks and other protected public-use areas provide access to the intriguing terrain and opportunity for playing in the seductive sand. The seashore is not continuous, but spread out over one Florida island, parts of other islands and Mississippi. Gulf Islands National Seashore of Pensacola protects 5,842 acres of public land and 18,953 acres of water along 52 miles of Gulf and bay shoreline around Pensacola. Then glimpses of the shimmering emerald waters bring me back to Florida, to the upper Gulf coast, where the sand doesn't get any whiter or softer, or the dunes any more spectacular. If I let it, the undulating dunes and stark white sand will take me back to the snow drifts of Minnesota, or to footage of the moon landing. ![]() I sometimes have to remind myself I'm on Planet Earth when I drive through the National Seashore, especially the part that engulfs the road between Pensacola Beach and Navarre Beach. Explore the history and landscape of these undisturbed areas along the Gulf Islands National Seashore in Florida.
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