Bricks on Black Water: Excavations and Public Education at an 1830s Gulf Coast Brickyard

Jess Hendrix

Bricks on Black Water: Excavations and Public Education at an 1830s Gulf Coast Brickyard

Year: 2017

Summary

In the mid-1820s the newly acquired American port town of Pensacola began to develop a huge military complex. Resulting from the demand for brick needed in the construction of a number of third-system masonry coastal forts and a Naval Yard, Pensacola developed a substantial brick industry almost overnight. Today, little remains of the many brickyards that supplied millions of bricks for forts located from New Orleans to the Dry Tortugas off the coast of Key West, Florida. Over the last several years, students at a public high school in Milton, Florida, have been participating in a Florida Public Archaeology Network joint-education program to uncover and document one of Pensacola’s most significant historic industries, by conducting archaeological investigations at a historic brickyard on the Backwater River. This paper will describe this project, including education initiatives, archaeological research and results, and comparative brickyard analyses.

Cite this Record

Bricks on Black Water: Excavations and Public Education at an 1830s Gulf Coast Brickyard. Jess Hendrix. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Fort Worth, TX. 2017 ( tDAR id: 435433)