ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — For the first time in hundreds of years, a fort now stands at Fort Mose historic site in St. Augustine. 

The life-sized replica aims to help tell the story of how the Underground Railroad first ran south, not north.

For several years now at Fort Mose Historic State Park, the volunteers used cannon firings to tell its story.

And now,  a tall, wooden fort now stands where one stood in the 1730’s.

“It’s spectacular. It’s unbelievable! We actually have a fort,” exclaimed Charmin Russell with pride. As a reenactor and volunteer at Fort Mose, she, along with others, spent two decades sharing this story with visitors using only a field, tents, cannons, and a touch of imagination.

Visitors often asked, “Where is the fort?”

Friday, the community and state park systems cut the ribbon for the life-sized replica of the actual Fort Mose.

Reenactor James Bullock smiled and said, “This is like Christmas and my birthday rolled into one!”

Just two years ago, Charles Ellis, the President of the Fort Mose Historical Society, pointed out to First Coast News the location on the tree-lined field where he envisioned the fort’s reconstruction.

Friday, he witnessed the reality of a dream, hard work and fundraising.

He spoke to the crowd of 200 people who were there for the grand opening, and said, “By rebuilding this fort, we enable people to reflect on what freedom truly is.”

Fort Mose is indeed a freedom story from the 1700’s. 

Under the colonial Spanish flag, Fort Mose was a place where enslaved people ran south to in order to escape life on plantations in Georgia and the Carolinas.  

Kathleen Deagan celebrated Friday. She was one of the first archaeologists to work on the site 40 years ago, long before it was a park.

“Oh, it’s just amazing,” she said. “I  could never have actually imagined that this would happen when we first started working here.”

She said the park system paid attention to detail, even with authentic nails and the kind of wood used.  

Having an actual fort could increase the number of visitors to the part, and it could “really bring  lot more visibility and tell the story a lot more widely,” Deagan said. “People do enjoy a physical remnant of something tangible, and this fort is very tangible and large.”

Russel said, “I would like it to be the change to where it brings the people in, where people would come and know the story.”

And while the building is a great teaching tool, reenactor AyoLane Halusky added that “It’s nothing without the volunteers, without the story itself, and this is we are on the land were they were.”

Fort Mose was the first free black settlement in what became the United States. The park is in St. Augustine, just a few minutes north of downtown.

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