Fort McRae: A Frontier Outpost on Lake Okeechobee

By Bob Davidsson
        Fort McRae was a hastily built wooden frontier outpost on Lake Okeechobee serving the U.S. Army as a supply depot and reconnaissance reporting station during both the Second and Third Seminole Indian Wars.
        It was one of only two blockhouses built by the Army to observe movements by the Seminole tribe around the big lake. Fort McRae was established about five miles north of Port Mayaca in Martin County. Its sister outpost, Fort Center, was a stockade built 40 miles due west across the lake near the mouth of Fisheating Creek in Glades County.
        Based upon later 19th century reports, the ruins of Fort McRae were located on the Okeechobee Ridge, a natural barrier that formed the original shoreline of the lake. The ridge separated the lake from low marshlands to the east. A small stream entered Lake Okeechobee near the fort, according to 1838 military maps.
        A May 20, 1882, article published in Jacksonville's "Florida Dispatch" newspaper, entitled "Lake Okeechobee and the Caloosahatchee Canal," provided a detailed description of the topography of the land near the ruins of Fort McRae during the late 19th century.
        "On the east side of Lake Okeechobee is Fort McRae, the newspaper reported, "which is on the borders of the lake and inside the sawgrass, which is two miles wide. The country is low prairie, with cypress, pine and cabbage palmetto islands."
        "From Fort McRae, north to the mouth of the Kissimmee (River), there is a large body of hammock bays, that are immensely rich, covered with live oak, red bay, cypress and cabbage palmetto," the article concludes.
       The history element of the "Dupuis Natural Area Future Management Plan, 2008-13, describes Fort McRae as "little more than a rough cabbage palm trunk stockade designed to store supplies and house a small garrison to defend the supplies."
        In fact, there is much more to report about the history of Fort McRae and the people who built and served in the frontier outpost during two Indian wars.

Fort McRae in the Second Seminole War
        Fort McRae was built as a supply encampment during Gen. Thomas Sidney Jesup's failed winter campaign of 1837-8 to bring the Second Seminole War (1835-42) to a close. His military strategy was to trap hostile Seminoles in a pincer movement between his east coast and interior armies. The plan almost worked.
        As Jesup advanced south from Fort Pierce, down the Indian River to the Jupiter Inlet, a second force under the command of Col. Zachary Taylor moved south along the east bank of the Kissimmee River to the north shore of Lake Okeechobee. The Seminoles made their stand near a stream that would later be named Taylor Creek
        The ensuing Battle of Okeechobee was fought on Christmas Day, 1837. It was a pyrrhic victory for the U.S. Army. The federal troops and militia won the field of battle, but sustained higher casualties and allowed their hostile adversaries to escape along the eastern shore of Lake Okeechobee.
        Col. Taylor pursued the Seminoles as far south as the ancient Big Mound City site in western Palm Beach County before halting his offensive. Along his march, he ordered the construction of the supply depot that was christened Fort McRae.
        For the past 180 years there has been uncertainty and confusion about the naming of the military post. Who exactly was "McRae"? Adding to the confusion were two other military bases in Florida sharing the same name.
        The best known Fort McRae (or McRee) guarded the entrance to Pensacola Bay during the Civil War. For a brief period, there also was a blockhouse named Fort McRae near the Turtle Mound site in Volusia County during the Second Seminole War.
        No military document has been found recording the dedication of Fort McRae. Based upon the Army's tradition of naming forts in honor of fallen war heroes, it is likely the outpost was named for Major Archibald McRae of the Second Brigade, Florida Volunteers.
       Captain McRae of Hamilton County enlisted with the Mounted Company, Second Regiment of the East Florida Volunteers on June 20, 1837. His enlistment document  stated he joined the state militia with two servants and three horses.
        McRae was promoted to the rank of major on July 20. His Florida Volunteers joined Col. Taylor Nov. 29 during his winter offensive. The militia officer was one of the casualties of this campaign.
        After the Battle of Okeechobee, the Seminoles retreated before Col. Taylor's force and eluded their pursuers in the Loxahatchee Slough. They joined several other bands west of the Jupiter Inlet in time to fight in the Battle of Loxahatchee against advance units of General Jesup's eastern army on Jan. 24, 1838.
        Once again the Seminoles were forced into a temporary refuge in the Loxahatchee Slough, with Col. Taylor to the west, General Jesup to the north, and a new "Military Trail" cleared to their east by Major William Lauderdale during his advance south to the New River.
        General Jesup offered the Seminoles enticements if they surrendered at the newly built Fort Jupiter. Medicine chief Sam Jones (Abaika) flatly refused, and slipped past the Army's tightening pincer with his followers into the sanctuary of the Everglades. However, 527 Indians, the majority women and children, surrendered at Fort Jupiter. They were transported to St. Augustine then deported to Oklahoma.
        In February 1838, Lt. W.G. Freeman, the officer in charge of the Seminole captives, was so concerned about the number of prisoners overflowing available facilities at Fort Jupiter that he sent 100 Indians under escort to Fort McRae. They were detained at the outpost until transports arrived to deport them.
        General Jesup's failure to end the conflict resulted in his reassignment in May 1838. He was replaced by none other than Zachary Taylor, who likewise failed to win the Seminole war after two years as the Army's commanding officer in Florida.
        Unlike Jesup, Taylor escaped the endless war with his reputation intact. He was hailed as the hero of the Battle of Okeechobee, received a promotion to the rank of general, and earned the endearing public moniker of "Old Rough and Ready." The Florida war was a stepping stone on the trail leading to his election as President of United States in 1848.
        As for Fort McRae, its usefulness as a supply base waned as the Army discontinued large military campaigns in favor of small raids by picked units. The post was abandoned and fell into disrepair before the end of the war in 1842.
        Capt. Martin Burke of the 3rd Artillery Regiment used the deserted outpost, which he described as the "old palmetto fortification" of Fort McRae, as a base of operations for three days during his September 1841 expedition to Lake Okeechobee.
        In February 1842, Navy Lt. John Rodgers led an expedition of 87 sailors and marines to the site of Fort McRae. Midshipman George Preble described the event in his "Diary of a Canoe Expedition into the Everglades."
        "At 4:30 p.m. (Feb. 22, 1842), left the Everglades," his diary states, "passed through a narrow belt of cypress swamp, hauled (the canoes) over a sandy ridge, and launched our canoes in the waters of Lake Okeechobee or Big Water."
        "We camped under what was once Fort Dulray (McRae)," the midshipman reported, "a cabbage tree log fortress. The lake spread before us, and to the west the sun went down, no land visible."
       
Fort McRae in the Third Seminole War, 1855-58
        The same year the Second Seminole War ended, Congress passed the "Armed Occupation Act of 1842" as an incentive to encourage settlers to move into the thinly populated Florida peninsula. The act granted 100 acres of unsettled land to any head of a family.
        Some of the grants were on land formerly occupied by the Seminole nation. The tribe was not consulted prior to the passage of the act. Many members of Congress and the Florida Legislature hoped new settlements would pressure the Seminoles to move to reservations in Oklahoma.
        In the months prior to the renewal of the Seminole war, the U.S. Army further pressured the Seminole and Miccosukee tribes by reactivating Forts McRae and Jupiter on the fringes of their Everglades sanctuary. The "Memoir of Lt. Col. John T. Greble," published by author Benson J. Lossim in 1870, describes the rebuilding of Fort McRae.
        The Memoir states, "Late in February (1855) Lt. Greble was ordered to Fort McRae, on the eastern shore of Lake Okeechobee, where a blockhouse was being built. He left Fort Myers with 10 men."
        "The journey by land and water was wearisome," the Memoir continues. "They went up the Caloosahatchee to Fort Thompson, thence across the wet prairie to Fisheating Creek, and down the stream into and across Lake Okeechobee, a sheet of water covering about 1,200 square miles. They had a rough and perilous voyage across it, and found inhospitable camping grounds on its margin, for dreary swamps pressed close upon its border."
        "They reached Fort McRae in safety and were then joined by another party detached for similar duty. The blockhouse was soon built, and the eastern shore of the lake explored and mapped," the Memoir concludes, "and Lt. Greble and his party returned by the way they went, reaching Fort Myers on the fifteenth of March."
          The Greble Memoir is supported by a military record entitled "A Letter from Brevet Col. John Munroe to Col. Samuel Cooper and Col. Lorenzo Thomas, Fort Brooke, July 15, 1855." The report summarizes the second expedition sent to Fort McRae for its restoration.
        "After having established his command at Fort Deynaud." the report states, "Major Mays will detach an officer with a party of men to construct a blockhouse upon the Fisheating Creek, near the site of old Fort Centre. Another blockhouse will also be constructed upon the east side of Lake Okeechobee and as far south as practicable."
        "While these operations were being carried on south of the Caloosahatchee, the military record continues, "blockhouses had been constructed near the sites of old Forts McRae and Centre by a detachment under command of Captain Allen and Lt. Vincent, 2nd Artillery, the former completed early in April and the latter in February (1855), and both were garrisoned until the season was so far advanced as to render their temporary abandonment advisable."
         Military posts during the Seminole wars were abandoned and reoccupied based upon the season of the year and needs of military commanders. The campaign season was fall, winter and spring. Due to diseases spread by insects, garrisons were often reassigned during the summer months.
        Fort Denaud, located on the Caloosahatchee River, served as the supply base for the Lake Okeechobee outposts at Forts McRae and Center. Fort Brooke, built in 1824, was the main base of operations for west coast and interior regions of Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades during the Third Seminole War. Fort McRae was supplied by boats sent from Fort Denaud.
        The Army sent armed surveying expeditions into the Everglades sanctuaries of the Seminole tribe. One surveying unit raided a plantation owned by Chief Billy Bowlegs, which sparked the beginning of Third Seminole War in December 1855.
        During the war, Fort McRae was garrisoned by a company of the Florida Mounted Volunteers. As the war progressed, the U.S. Army relied heavily on Florida militia units to man its outposts. During the seven-year Second Seminole War, for example, 6,854 Florida volunteers were activated as U.S. militia units.
        The Army's plan of action was to confine the Seminoles to the Everglades in South Florida by building a chain of forts, spaced about 20 miles apart, between the Jupiter Inlet and the mouth of the Caloosahatchee River. From east to west, garrisons were posted in Forts Jupiter, McRae,  Shackleford, Center, Thompson, Denaud,  Myers and Dulaney.
        Communications between its scattered Army outposts was key to the success of military operations during the Third Seminole War. The route used between Forts McRae and Jupiter is described in the April 1856 "Memoir to Accompany a Military Map of the Peninsula of Florida South of Tampa Bay," published for use by the U.S. Department of War.
        The 26-page report includes the following narrative: "The only continuous route between the eastern shore of Lake Okeechobee and Fort Jupiter, that has so far been traversed and reported upon, leads nearly west from Fort McRae to the General Eustis Road and along that road to the fort."
        Gen. Abraham Eustis (1786 - 1843) served as an Army surveyor and military mapmaker in Florida. He supervised the construction of several Florida military roads later used during the Second and Third Seminole Wars.
        "The old bridge at the crossing of the Lochahatchee (Loxahatchee River) being now impractical, it is necessary to ford the stream at a place a mile above. The present site of Fort Jupiter being to the east of the new road leaves the old trail to the left and crosses the creek at a point three miles south of Fort Jupiter."
        "The crossing is easy, and the remainder of the distance is over good country," the 1856 Memoir concludes.
        The U.S. Department of War declared the Third Seminole War at an end on May 8, 1858, following the surrender and deportation of Seminole leader Billy Bowlegs (Holata Micco) to Oklahoma aboard the steam ship "Grey Cloud".
         The Army's network of forts, including Fort McRae, were abandoned to the elements. The wooden blockhouses became the domain of termites, with their ruins erased by wildfires and the ravages of time.
(c.) Davidsson, 2018.
 *NOTE: See related article about "Fort Jupiter" below, and additional articles archived in Older Posts.