Finding 1821

Finding 1821. . The Pensacola streets you walk on today are the same ones used in 1821. The city's layout follows a plan made during the British period (1763-1781). British Principal Surveyor Elias Durnford redesigned the old Spanish town using a grid system. When the Spanish returned in 1781, they kept the street grid in place. At that time, all the streets were made of sand and frequently flooded., Finding 1821 is part of the UWF Historic Trust's Suddenly American exhibit. Using historic newspapers, maps, and archaeology, it is possible to locate where businesses stood in the 1820s. Each site on the Finding 1821 Trail shows what was near that location two hundred years ago. Take a stroll around town, visit local shops, and explore the history of Pensacola by scanning the QR Code at each stop along the Trail. For more about 1820s Pensacola, visit the Pensacola Museum of History to see Suddenly American: A Meeting of Heritage and Country., All the houses look in ruins, old as time. Many squares of the town appear grown over...all look neglected; The weather is oppressively warm to me, and raining every day. Sometimes the streets are two feet deep in water. , Rachel Jackson to Elizabeth Kingsley, July 23, 1821, The land now occupied by the Pensacola Museum of History was the front "yard" of several government buildings. Many of the structures in this area had fallen into disrepair by the time the United States arrived. The north wing of the museum sits on the lot designated for a new church, though one was never built on this site. In 1832, the town finally completed a church across from Seville Square. You can visit the Old Christ Church, a UWF Historic Trust site, on one of our tours., This marker is a product of Florida's territorial bicentennial celebration on July 17, 2021, Background amage: Map of Pensacola, likely drawn by town physician John Brosnaham in 1819. (Image courtesy of UWF Historic Trust)