I think the park service or the 'entitiy' that sets up some sort of 'historical' scene at these sites do not really think things through. We have the big Rodman sitting atop Pickens now, and the little Rodman is at Barrancas. I believe they were like later than the CW? Pickens had the Army Rangers practice every summer til the mid 1960's. For 2 weeks, we went to bed hearing BOOM -------BOOM----all night long. At that time, the forts were all wide open and I believe they just did what they wanted. May have used some historical material for target practice. The batteries at Pickens were later and you'd have to be either reallllly brave or very dumb to jump into them. Used to be full of skunks but now, snakes are the primary residents.

I got in trouble when I was about 14. The family was at the campground and some of us cousins were doing our regular fort crawl and a Ranger or whatever was telling a group of tourist that the NorthWest part of the fort that is open was hit by a "Confederate cannon during the Battle of Pensacola Bay". Nope, I'm not kidding. I sort of stopped and said, nope, that's not what blew it up. The dummy's let some fire source get to the powder that was stored there waaaaay after the CW. The Ranger or whatever asked me to leave. I did.

We have so many artifacts that are still being unearthed it's no wonder some of the early residents sort of didn't pay attention to what they did have. They probably figured something just like what they'd given away was going to be dug up the next week. The Navy, now, they wanted to clean up the area at Barrancas. Once they sent Warrington across the bayou and took over the whole place out there, they were gung ho to move anything that wasn't stamped USN. Now that the Cemetery is almost maxed out with expansion, I'm not sure what they're going to do. It's already creeping up to the walls of Redoubt. I know people who work on base who have found artifacts. It's now illegal to dig them up, take them home, anything but report the find. The golf course is sitting on top of a gold mine of stuff. Some early Indian but can't dig up those greens ya know. Golfers gotta have their nice green, non lumpy grass. GRRR--:((((((

Pam