Fort Pickens

The National Park Service reopened the Fort Pickens Area for day use on Sunday, 18 October 2026 at 9 a.m. The same release says the area remains under a boil water notice, and lists the Fort Pickens Campground and the Battery Worth pavilion among the places that stay closed after Hurricane Isaias.

That release is the reason this page exists: it names this area and carries a date. The rest of the page is the park's standing rules and the Coast Pilot's description of the entrance, and each of those carries its own date in the sources below.

The entrance to Pensacola Bay is 0.6 mile wide and leads through Caucus Channel, a dredged cut through the shoals that extends 1.5 miles seaward. Caucus Shoal, with 2 to 18 feet, runs south from the west side of the entrance, and East Bank and Middle Ground reach 1.6 miles south from the west end of Santa Rosa Island. Depths on NOAA charts are reckoned to mean lower low water.

In midchannel the tidal current is about 1.7 knots at strength, and currents of up to 8 knots have been reported in the entrance; in Caucus Cut the ebb runs 2 to 2.5 knots for the two hours around its strongest. Coming from the east, the buildings of the park ranger station, 2.5 miles east of the entrance, are the landmark.

Pensacola Bay is about 12.5 miles long, with depths of 20 to 50 feet. Nothing at Fort Pickens is a designated anchorage: the Coast Pilot puts the usual anchorage inside the bay off the city of Pensacola, and the park's rules on anchoring apply across the whole seashore rather than marking out a spot here.

On storms the Coast Pilot is explicit: “The location of Pensacola in the hurricane belt and the absence of sheltered facilities and anchorages renders Pensacola Bay a poor hurricane haven.”

The historic fort is open and the park store inside it keeps 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The Fort Pickens Visitor Center, the Discovery Center, is closed for construction and exhibit renovations, and Battery 234 Loop Road and Battery Cooper are closed to vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians until further notice. A ferry runs from Pensacola and Pensacola Beach from Friday to Sunday; private boats may not lie at its dock.

The entrance station gate is open 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. from 1 March to 31 October, the Fort Pickens gate 8 a.m. to sunset year-round, and overnight parking is not permitted at any time of year. The park takes no cash. The Gulf Islands annual pass costs $45 and is good for 365 days from purchase; the standard vehicle, motorcycle and per-person rates in the park's fee table are each dated 1 January to 30 September, so they do not say what is due in October.