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Fort Brooke

Fort Brooke

Photo courtesy of the Florida Photo Archives.

    Colonel George Mercer Brooke established this major military post on the Hillsborough River in 1824. By 1829 Fort Brooke included a guardhouse, barracks, storehouses, a blockhouse, a powder magazine, stables, and a wharf. Following the Dade massacre late in 1835, Seminoles and their runaway-slave allies laid siege to Fort Brooke for almost a month in 1836. More than 40,000 soldiers passed through the fort during the Second Seminole War, 1835-42. From its largest size, 16 square miles, the fort's grounds were diminished a number of times by the federal government. On July 25, 1848, the day on which Tampa was legally created, President Polk signed an Act of Congress that granted Hillsborough County 160 acres from the fort. Fort Brooke played minor roles in the Third Seminole War and in the Civil War, after which it was abandoned. Some commercial establishments in Ybor City and in other parts of Tampa sit atop what used to be Fort Brooke, as does part of the interstate highway system. Bronze plaques at some of these places mark the general locations of some parts of the fort.



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