The site now occupied by Naval Air Station Pensacola has a colorful historical background dating back to the 16th century when Spanish explorer Don Tristan de Luna founded a colony here on the bluff where Fort Barrancas is now situated. In the ensuing years, the flags of Spain, France, Great Britain, the Confederacy and the United States flew over the strategic port of Pensacola.

The U.S. purchase of the Florida’s from Spain in 1821 spawned government realization of strategic importance of Pensacola Bay as a site for a support facility for naval squadrons operating in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.

Realizing the advantages of the Pensacola harbor and the large timber reserves nearby for shipbuilding, President John Quincy Adams and Secretary of the Navy Samuel Southard, in 1825, made arrangements to build a Navy yard on the southern tip of Escambia County, where the air station is today. Navy Captains William Bainbridge, Lewis Warrington and James Biddle selected the site on Pensacola Bay.

Construction began in April 1826, and the Pensacola Navy Yard became one of the best-equipped naval stations in the country. In its early years the base dealt mainly with the suppression of slave trade and piracy in the Gulf and Caribbean.

With a large wet basin, a floating dry dock, and other facilities for building, docking, and repairing the largest warships of the time, the yard turned out such masterpieces as the steam frigate USS Pensacola which saw Civil War action at both the Battle of Mobile Bay and the Battle of New Orleans.

Eighty acres in the southeast corner of the yard, around which a brick wall was built, was set aside for use as an arsenal. Portions of the wall are still standing.

When the Union forces captured New Orleans in 1862, Confederate troops, fearing attack from the west, retreated from the Navy Yard and reduced most of the facilities to rubble. After the war, the ruins at the yard were cleared away and work was begun to rebuild the base. Many of the present structures on the air station were built during this period, including the stately two- and threestory houses on North Avenue.