While reading about the blockade-runner Kate Dale, I read about a Fort Brooke in Tampa and realized I'd never heardof this fortification before. So I looked it up in Wikipedia.
It was located on the current site of the Tampa Convention Center which was named after Col. George Brooke who established a military post there in 1824. It was amajor outpost during the Seminole War and the Civil War.
It received enemy fire during the October 1863 attack on the blockade-runners and was captured by the Union Navy along with Tampa on May 6, 1864.
Nothing remains of the fort except two cannons located on the campus of the University of Tampa. However, they are not marked as being from the fort.
While the city was building the Fort Brooke Parking Garage, an unknown cemetery was uncovered with the remains of soldiers and Seminoles.
They were reinterred elsewhere, which is better than I can say for the poor folks at Fort Fisher in Waco, Texas.
The Battle of Fort Fisher, N.C.
