It’s time to look forward to looking back.
If history is your thing, Saturday, Jan. 13 is your day, as the second annual Fort Pierce History Fest will be presented on 2nd Street from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
“It’s a celebration of Treasure Coast history intended to familiarize newcomers with local history and help old timers share their stories of what they remember,” Gregory Enns, event organizer, said. “The surprise is history is in their own backyards. A lot of historical events were very close.”
It seems the first folks who lived around St. Lucie were the Ais people, a tribe that ranged along the Indian River likely from modern-day Martin to Brevard counties.
“It’s an extinct tribe,” Enns said.
The Ais were likely related to the Tequesta and some may have joined the Seminoles.
“One of the presentations we’re going to have in the afternoon, at 1:30 (p.m.), is on Fort Pierce and how it was established as a fort 1838,” Enns said.
The fort was built on high ground.
“Before that, it was a sacred burial mound used by the Ais Indians,” Enns said.
From the 1500s to the early 1800s, there was a lot of European activity around St. Lucie County. Indeed, the Spanish gave the area the name St. Lucie by building a fort in 1566 and naming it Santa Lucia. But, Florida became a U.S. territory in 1822, four years after the First Seminole War. Eight years later, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act. That triggered the Second Seminole War five years later which led to the establishment of Fort Pierce.
Lt. Col Benjamin Pierce built the fort in modern St. Lucie County, so the government could issue land grants to settlers under the Armed Occupation Act. The War of 1812 veteran constructed a palmetto log structure that was only around for a few years. It was never the site of any recorded pivotal battles. But, Fort Pierce does get to make one boast. A young officer by the name of William Tecumseh Sherman served there.
Sherman is one of the most hated, admired and remembered generals of the Civil War. He’s best remembered for the Savannah Campaign, more commonly called “Sherman’s March.” That was a bold Union operation to cripple Georgia’s agricultural, transportation and industrial resources. How Sherman’s time in Fort Pierce shaped his military thinking is anyone’s guess.
The fort wasn’t around for long.
“It burned to the ground in 1841,” Enns said. “I believe by that time homesteaders were living in it and that’s how it caught fire.”
But, military history isn’t the only sort around St. Lucie. The county has also made agricultural history. Back in 1937, the 65,000-acre Adams Ranch was founded. “It became a model for ranching in Florida,” Enns said.
The festival will feature numerous re-enactors, ghost tours, trolley rides and much more. History presentations will be at the Sunrise Theatre at 117 S. 2nd. St., Fort Pierce. In addition to the Adams Ranch and Fort Pierce presentations, at 12:30 p.m. Indian River Charter High School will present a musical based on letters between Zora Neale Hurston and Waldo Sexton.
“We’ll have the Port St. Lucie Historical Society at the festival,” Enns said. “They’ll have an exhibition.”
More about the history fest is at www.indianrivermag.com. The magazine is one of the festival co-sponsors.