Fort Brooke Cemetery Excavation — Tampa, Florida

A construction crew found a forgotten Army graveyard. The historical marker text recorded by the Florida Center for Instructional Technology at the University of South Florida states that in 1980, the burial site was discovered accidentally during the construction of the city parking complex, the structure known today as the Fort Brooke Parking Garage in downtown Tampa. The marker, credited to the Tampa Historical Society, says the cemetery held soldiers, civilian employees and Indians, and that its grave sites had become obliterated and passed out of all remembrance.

The digging uncovered more than bones. Clio's entry on Fort Brooke, compiled from articles by historian James W. Covington, says the site was excavated during the building of the parking garage, leading to the discovery of artifacts and remains of US soldiers and Seminoles. The marker gives the final count of people identified for reburial: 102 soldiers and civilians, and 42 Seminoles. A 2019 FOX 13 report describes the 1980 Fort Brooke garage find as the first discovery of buried remains downtown, likely soldiers from the fort established in 1824.

The burial ground belonged to the Seminole War garrison. According to the marker transcribed by USF's ClipPix collection, during the Second Seminole War (1835 to 1842) the U.S. Army established a cemetery at this site for soldiers, civilian employees and Indians. Fort Brooke at that time was the Army's main post on Florida's west coast, and Clio notes that about 3,000 soldiers were stationed there during the war, which made it the major military outpost on that coast.

Some of the dead were moved long before 1980. The marker records that in 1883 about 20 soldiers were removed to Barrancas National Cemetery in Pensacola. Clio ties that transfer to the closing of the post: the Army decommissioned Fort Brooke in 1883, moved those soldiers, and the Federal Land Office then opened the fort grounds to homestead applications. Clio adds that Fort Brooke was incorporated as a town in 1885 and was annexed by Tampa twenty two years later, which folded the old burial ground into the city's downtown.

The two groups went to different resting places in 1981. The marker states that one hundred and two soldiers and civilians were reburied at Oaklawn Cemetery on March 24, 1981, while the spirit of 42 Seminoles was put to rest with the essence of burning herbs at the Seminole Shrine at Orient Road on August 5, 1981. Bay News 9 later summarized the same split: the non-native remains from the Fort Brooke parking garage were laid to rest at Oaklawn, and the native remains discovered in the 1980 build were given to the Seminole Tribe of Florida.

At Oaklawn the reburial is a single communal grave. The City of Tampa's Oaklawn walking tour notes that there are two mass graves at Oaklawn Cemetery, both in the Northeast Section, and that the first, adjacent to the Sexton Cottage, contains the remains of 102 settlers and soldiers originally interred at Fort Brooke. The setting fits the fort's era. The city's main tour page says Oaklawn Cemetery was created in 1850, when Tampa was a struggling town of around 500 persons, and it is also the burial place of many of Tampa's pioneer families and thirteen of the city's mayors.

Only signs remain on the original site. Clio states that there is nothing left of the fort, only two historical markers: one which locates the Officers' Quarters and one which marks the cemetery. The cemetery marker's text, transcribed by USF, was photographed by Roy Winkelman in January 2006 for the university's Exploring Florida collection, which files it among the historical markers of downtown Tampa.

The surrounding land has been rebuilt many times. The Tampa Historical entry on Cotanchobee Fort Brooke Park explains that the tract Lt. Col. George Mercer Brooke chose ran from the mouth of the Hillsborough River east to today's Tampa Bay History Center, and now holds Amalie Arena, the history center, two convention center hotels, expansive parking and the park itself on Old Water Street. That entry captions the cemetery marker as a memorial to 144 soldiers, civilians and Native Americans, matching the marker's totals of 102 and 42, and says the burial site was rediscovered in 1980 during a construction dig.

Similar finds followed. The FOX 13 report of October 2019 says the construction of the Tampa Convention Center led to a similar discovery, and that in 2018 crews working on the Water Street project found an old military burial ground known as the Estuary Cemetery, which might also have been connected to Fort Brooke, according to Rodney Kite-Powell, director of the Touchton Map Library at the Tampa Bay History Center.

Bay News 9 covered the Water Street find as it happened in November 2018. Strategic Property Partners, developing the waterfront district across from Amalie Arena, said archaeologists were beginning to excavate what they called grave shafts. The archaeologists were not surprised, the station reported, because the Tampa Bay History Center holds maps that show the Estuary Cemetery and the whole area was once the Fort Brooke military outpost. Kite-Powell's exhibition Replacing Ft. Brooke had already laid modern maps over Fort Brooke era maps to explain such finds. Bay News 9 added that any human remains confirmed at Water Street could potentially be interred at Oaklawn, as the 1980 garage remains were.

Tampa historians point to a century of building without looking down. In the 2019 FOX 13 report, which placed the Fort Brooke finds alongside the search for Ridgewood Cemetery at King High School and the remains found at Zion Cemetery, Kite-Powell said there was such a rush to develop the city that preservation was not a focus, and that what was once seen as the most convenient thing can now be seen as a tragedy. City Council Chairman Luis Viera said the city should work with the school board and the Tampa Housing Authority to respect those who were not respected in life.

For Fort Brooke the loss happened in stages. The Army moved some soldiers to Pensacola in 1883, the fort grounds were opened to homesteaders, and the remaining graves stayed out of sight until a parking structure for downtown Tampa reached them in 1980. The marker's own phrase, that the graves passed out of all remembrance, is the record of that forgetting, and the reburials at Oaklawn Cemetery and the Seminole Shrine on Orient Road in 1981 are the record of its reversal.