FDS Mullet KeyThe Fort De Soto Archive
Guided Journeys

Reading Paths

The archive can be read in any order, but some stories run in a line. These are curated paths through the entries, each a journey with a beginning and an end. Follow one straight through.

The Spanish Conquest

Eighty years of failed conquest on one bay, from first contact to the fort that did not hold.
  1. Juan Ponce de Leon
  2. Panfilo de Narvaez
  3. The de Soto Landing, 1539
  4. Juan Ortiz
  5. Hirrihigua
  6. Mocoso
  7. Father Luis de Cancer
  8. The 1567 Tocobaga Garrison
  9. Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda

The Native Bay

The people who were here first, and who outlasted three Spanish attempts to rule them.
  1. The Tocobaga
  2. The Calusa
  3. Chief Carlos
  4. Urriparacoxi
  5. Hirrihigua
  6. Mocoso

Africans in Early Florida

From the conquistadors' ranks to the first free Black town in what is now the United States.
  1. Juan Garrido
  2. Estevanico
  3. Francisco Menendez
  4. Fort Mose
  5. Angola

The Mapmakers

How a hidden bay became a charted one, drawn by the surveyors who gave Mullet Key its name.
  1. Francisco Maria Celi
  2. Juan Baptista Franco
  3. George Gauld
  4. Bernard Romans
  5. The Shipping Channel

Building the Fort

The making of a coastal-defense post, and the integrated weapon it was really part of.
  1. The Phosphate Trade & the Port
  2. The Birth of the Fort
  3. The Harbor Defenses of Tampa Bay
  4. Battery Laidley
  5. Battery Bigelow
  6. Col. T.T.S. Laidley
  7. Garrison Life at Fort De Soto

The Wars Offshore

The two World Wars as they touched the bay's mouth, from a bombing range to submarines in the Gulf.
  1. MacDill Field
  2. The WWII Bombing Range
  3. The U-Boat War of 1942
  4. The Harbor Defenses of Tampa Bay

Disasters at the Channel

The storms and wrecks that have torn through the bay's mouth, from a hurricane to two catastrophes in one year.
  1. The Great Gale of 1848
  2. The 1921 Tampa Bay Hurricane
  3. USCGC Blackthorn
  4. The Sunshine Skyway Disaster
  5. The Sunshine Skyway Bridge
  6. The 1993 Egmont Channel Oil Spill

Fortress to Park

How an abandoned gun battery became the county's largest park and a national best beach.
  1. The Birth of the Fort
  2. The Quarantine Station
  3. The WWII Bombing Range
  4. Fort De Soto Park

Lighthouses and Islands

The other keys and beacons that guard the same channel as Mullet Key.
  1. Egmont Key
  2. Egmont Key Lighthouse
  3. Mullet Key Shoal Light
  4. Fort Dade
  5. John's Pass
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