Category History, Heritage & Cultural Memory
Pensacola Mayor Calls for Removal of Confederate Statue at Lee Square
Reading Time: 3 minutesPensacola Mayor Ashton Hayward on Wednesday publicly called for the removal of the Confederate statue at Lee Square, becoming one of several Southern mayors in recent years to endorse rethinking or relocating Confederate monuments. Hayward made the remarks during a radio interview with Andrew McKay of NewsRadio 1620, framing the issue as one of historical […]
Remembering Pensacola Beach the Way It Was
Reading Time: 3 minutesRemember Pensacola Beach before cars, traffic, and high-rise hotels? Before restaurants and bars lined the shore? For locals and longtime visitors, the island once felt almost untouched — miles of open coastline, dunes rolling toward the horizon, and only a handful of structures breaking the landscape. The opening of the first bridges to Gulf Breeze […]
Fort Pickens to Host Living History Event on Memorial Day
Reading Time: < 1 minuteFort Pickens will host a schedule of “living history” programs in celebration of Memorial Day next week, Gulf Islands National Seashore officials announced Tuesday. The event is presented in partnership with the Walton Guard. Rangers and volunteers will present special programs about soldiers stationed at the fort during the Civil War, as well as commemorative […]
Pensacola’s First Post-Prohibition Brewery Opened 81 Years Ago
Reading Time: 3 minutesBeing a bustling harbor city and under five flags at various times, Pensacola has “wet the whistle” of many throughout its history. Today, the City of Five Flags has an ever-growing appetite for craft beer and libations, but that wasn’t always the case. Pensacola first got its taste for brews at the turn of the […]
Historic Train Stations of the Gulf Coast
Reading Time: 3 minutesThe heyday of railway travel may long be gone, but the nostalgic allure of architecturally inspiring infrastructure and traveling the country by rail has ensured we’ll never tire of seeing the grandeur and timelessness of our historic station buildings. With the recent publicity of an admitted long-shot effort to bring Amtrak’s Sunset Limited back to […]
The Hurricane That Doomed America’s First Settlement
Reading Time: 3 minutesOnce again, hurricane season is upon us. As a yearly ritual, residents along the Gulf Coast use this current time of calm for preparation…and a little history. Some of the most famous storms in the chronicles of hurricane history made landfall in Florida. The Sunshine State — and notably, the Gulf Coast — is certainly […]
Search Continues for Pensacola’s Lost Colonial-Era Settlement
Reading Time: 3 minutesWhile stories fill history books about immigrants who came to Colonial America and thrived, not as much is known about those who didn’t succeed. Through exhaustive research, Jen Knutson, a graduate research assistant with the University of West Florida’s Division of Anthropology and Archaeology, is telling the story of one of those ill-fated groups – […]
America’s First European Settlement Unearthed in Pensacola
Reading Time: 2 minutesFor centuries, historians have searched for the exact location of Tristán de Luna y Arellano’s 1559 settlement in Pensacola — the first multi-year European settlement in what is now the United States. Today, that mystery has been solved. Archaeologists from the University of West Florida (UWF) announced the groundbreaking discovery of the long-lost de Luna […]
Transcript of New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s Address on Confederate Monuments
Reading Time: 3 minutesContext: Just hours before the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee was removed — the fourth such monument dismantled in New Orleans — Mayor Mitch Landrieu delivered a historic speech at Gallier Hall. What follows is the full transcript of his powerful and emotional remarks, reflecting on history, justice, and unity. Thank you for […]