Nestled in the southwest corner of Florida’s Apalachicola
National Forest sits a historic fort known today as Fort
Gadsden—the only historic landmark listed on the National
Register of Historic Places in the U.S. Forest Service’s
Southern Region. The fort served as a Native American trading
post, a British fort, as U.S. Fort Gadsden, and as a Confederate
fort during the Civil War. The fort was also used as a safe
haven for runaway slaves travelling the Underground Railroad,
which ran south to Spanish Florida prior to 1821. The Fort was
not as remote then as it is now because the Apalachicola River
was a major travel way as maps at that time depicted it as
prominently as Pensacola and St. Marks. It was a destination for
freedom because it was located in a different country at a
strategically defensive position, had good soils for farming,
good water sources and easy access to coastal trade via the
river. Recently, a group of pilots from the International
Military Student Office at Alabama’s Fort Rucker visited