BY JANIE GOULD AND GREGORY ENNS
PHOTOS BY GREGORY ENNS Signs mark a five-acre parcel on South Indian
River Drive as Old Fort Park, but a recent archaeological
survey revealed that the land more correctly
contains the remains of an ancient Ais
Indian civilization.
The survey by the Archeological and Historical
Conservancy concluded that most of the footprint of the
original Fort Pierce, built 170 years ago during the Second
Seminole War, was probably on private land north of the site.
The fort, constructed of sabal palm trunks for walls and
thatched palm leaves for roofing, was built in 1838 as part
of the U.S. government’s campaign to remove Seminole
Indians living in Florida.
At one point, the fort housed as many as 1,000 soldiers
brought in to fight the bloody eight-year war. Though no
battles were fought around it, the fort was considered a
key supply center for the U.S. Army. Built adjacent to the
Okeechobee region to support General Thomas S. Jesup’s
campaign against the scattered Seminoles in South
Florida, the fort was four miles south of the only continuously
navigable inlet in the region, the Indian River Inlet.
That opening to the ocean, across from present-day St.
LIVING HISTORY
Lucie Village, no longer exists.
The fort was named in honor of Col. Benjamin K. Pierce,
the army commander who dispatched troops to build a
fortification on the Indian River. Pierce was the brother of
Franklin Pierce, who would become the 14th president of
the United States.
FOUNDING OF THE FORT
In “Our Worthy Commander,” a biography of Benjamin
Pierce, author Louis H. Burbey wrote of the fort’s founding
after a Naval detachment in Haulover was sent down the
Indian River 90 miles south.
“On Dec. 28, Lt. Powell, commander of a naval detachment,
sailed south on the Indian River to select eligible sites
for depots. On the eve of Dec. 29, Col. Pierce issued orders
that the regiment should be in readiness to embark at 2 in
the morning. By daylight we were all aboard,” said Burbey’s
book, quoting the journal of Dr. Jacob R. Motte, an army surgeon
accompanying the expedition.
“After quietly gliding all night down the river, they joined
Lt. Powell at the Indian River Inlet on the afternoon of Dec.
31. On Jan. 2, the blockhouse of palmetto logs was erected
and dubbed Fort Pierce, after our worthy commander, Lt.
Col. Benjamin Kendrick Pierce, commander of the First
Regiment of Artillery.”
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Old Fort Park was purchased by the county from a private landowner in 1950. At the time, officials didn't know that most of the original army outpost
known as Fort Pierce was located on private property north of the park. The abundance of sabal palms at the site provided wood for construction of the fort.
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