Fort San Francisco de Pupo

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Fort San Francisco de Pupo (Spanish: Fuerte San Francisco de Pupo) was an 18th-century Spanish fort on the west bank of the St. Johns River in Florida, about eighteen miles from St. Augustine (San Agustín), the capital of Spanish Florida (La Florida). Lying on the old trail to the Spanish province of Apalachee in western Florida, Fort Pupo and its sister outpost, Fort Picolata on the opposite shore of the river, controlled all traffic on the ferry crossing. The remains of Fort Pupo are situated about three miles south of Green Cove Springs in Clay County, near the end of Bayard Point opposite Picolata. The surrounding area is a hammock of southern live oak, southern magnolia, pignut hickory and other typical trees native to the region.

The site of Fort Pupo was excavated in stratigraphic tests by cultural anthropologist John Goggin and students of the University of Florida in 1950 and 1951; his team's excavations indicated that the original structure of Fort Pupo was little more than a sentry box. A letter written by Royal Engineer Antonio de Arredondo on January 22, 1737 describes it as "a sentry box built of boards, eight feet in diameter… surrounded by a palisade." This diminutive fortification was replaced in 1738 by the construction of a new wooden blockhouse, barracks, and storehouses on the orders of the governor of La Florida, Manuel de Montiano. The work was done under the direction of Engineer Pedro Ruiz de Olano, who pulled a crew of carpenters, sawyers, and axemen from construction of the Castillo de San Marcos, the fortress of St. Augustine, to rebuild the Pupo blockhouse. The architectural plan and profile of the structure are shown in his "Plano y perfil del nuevo fortín de San Francisco de Pupo" (Plan and Profile of Fort San Francisco de Pupo).

內容改寫自 Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)。照片來自 Wikimedia Commons.