Fort Vinton — Vero Beach, Florida

Fort Vinton was a U.S. Army interior post west of the Indian River, on ground that is now part of Indian River County. The state's historical marker, titled Site of Fort Vinton and listed under Vero Beach in the Florida Division of Historical Resources marker database, says a supply outpost called Fort or Post No. 2 went up early in April 1839, about twenty miles northwest of Fort Pierce.

The post had two short lives. The first ran from 1839 until the Second Seminole War wound down, and the marker says the works were abandoned by or before 1842. The second began in the winter of 1849 and 1850, when the Army reopened the site under a new name, Fort Vinton, as an outpost of Fort Capron at Indian River Inlet. By May 1850 the soldiers had gone again.

Nothing of the post survives above ground. The site lies on private farmland west of Vero Beach, and the county's knowledge of it comes from Army records, nineteenth century maps and the work of the Indian River County Main Library's archive staff, summarized in a June 11, 2009, TCPalm column about the marker on State Road 60.

The marker text frames Post No. 2 as part of the 1838-39 campaign of the Second Seminole War, which had begun in 1835 after the Seminoles refused removal to a western reservation. Army planners wanted to push the campaign south, away from settled districts, and that meant reoccupying coastal forts such as Fort Pierce and building new depots inland. Post No. 2, west of the future Vero Beach, was one of those depots: a place to store supplies for columns working the interior.

The archived Fort Vinton page of the St. Lucie Historical Society gives the founding date as April 7, 1839, and puts the post about 18 miles northwest of Fort Pierce, slightly closer than the marker's twenty. Either figure places it in the flatwoods west of the Indian River, far beyond any settlement of the period; the Vero area itself would see no permanent settlers until the 1880s.

The numbered name stuck. TCPalm reported that the depot west of Vero went by the generic name Post No. 2 until 1850, so Post No. 2 kept its number for roughly a decade. The county historian, quoted by TCPalm in 2009, said posts across the peninsula were spaced about 20 miles apart because that distance was about a day's march for troops crossing marsh and wetland between Fort Pierce and the interior.

After the Second Seminole War the post at Indian River County's western edge stood empty. The St. Lucie Historical Society dates its reopening to December 19, 1849, when the Army moved troops back into South Florida in anticipation of renewed fighting with the Seminoles. The state marker places the reactivation early in 1850, during a fresh effort to persuade the remaining Seminoles to emigrate.

This time the post was one link in a chain. A chapter reprinted by Allen Altvater from Park DeVane's Early Florida History, first printed in a 1981 Sebring Historical Society bulletin, describes the Army, with General David Twiggs in command at Fort Brooke, deciding on a series of forts no more than 15 miles apart from the Manatee River eastward. The eastern end of that list runs Fort Arbuckle, Fort Drum, Fort Vinton and Fort Capron, the last north of Fort Pierce, which made the post west of Vero a relay point between the Kissimmee prairie and the coast.

The DeVane chapter says the line was garrisoned by regular troops who patrolled between the forts, and that the posts were gradually abandoned within months. Fort Vinton fits that pattern exactly. The St. Lucie Historical Society records its closing on May 22, 1850, and the state marker says Fort Vinton is not known to have played a role in the hostilities of the later 1850s that followed in other parts of the peninsula.

One source gives a longer span. The 2009 TCPalm column described the post as having a lifespan of 1839 to 1858, and the St. Lucie society's soldier roster is headed 1839 to 1856. The marker's narrower account, with closure in May 1850, is the one the state has posted near Vero Beach.

The renaming in the winter of 1849 and 1850 honored Captain John Rogers Vinton, an artillery officer who had served in Florida during the earlier war. According to the St. Lucie Historical Society's biographical note, he was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on June 16, 1801, graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1817, and became a captain in the 3d Artillery on December 28, 1835, the year the Second Seminole War began.

Vinton died near Vera Cruz, Mexico, on March 22, 1847, during the siege of that city in the Mexican War, three years before his name was attached to the post west of Vero Beach. Indian River County's archivist told TCPalm in 2009 that no records show he served at Post No. 2 itself, and that a main reason the Army chose his name was that he was so well liked.

He is also remembered for his drawings. The 2009 column noted that a Vinton sketch of the Seminole leader Osceola appears in Florida school history textbooks, which gives the name on the Indian River County marker an unexpected link to one of the most reproduced images of the Seminole Wars.

Researchers have tried for years to pin the site down. The St. Lucie Historical Society page describes a project by Indian River County's Florida history librarian and a history professor from Indian River Community College that used latitude and longitude from Army documents and a borrowed GPS unit. With the landowner's permission they placed the fort about 2.39 nautical miles south of Highway 60 and about 0.4 miles west of the Highway 60 and 122nd Avenue intersection. No artifacts were found.

The site cannot be visited. TCPalm reported in June 2009 that there is no public access to the original Fort Vinton ground, which is an orange grove on private property southwest of the State Road 60 and 122nd Avenue corridor. The only public reminder in Indian River County is the state marker beside the highway.

Old maps show how long the name outlasted the soldiers. The Maps ETC collection at the University of South Florida catalogues an 1882 G.W. and C.B. Colton map covering Brevard County and vicinity, and its place names include Fort Vinton and Fort Drum along with the Indian River and Lake Okeechobee, more than thirty years after the post closed.

The marker has moved with Vero Beach's growth. In the mid-1970s it was set on State Road 60 just east of 66th Avenue, a spot the county historian told TCPalm was chosen because more drivers would pass it at a time when 66th Avenue counted as the edge of town and State Road 60 at 122nd Avenue was a two-lane road. That location sat roughly 13 miles from the fort site.

An automobile knocked the sign down early in the 2000s, and it was missing for seven years. The June 2009 column reported it back in its old place near the Indian River Mall, refurbished with gold letters on green, though 19 lines of text were hard to read at highway speed and there was no safe place to stop. The plan then was to move it west of Interstate 95, near 122nd Avenue, in 2010.

The state database now gives the marker's location as the S.R. 60 and S.R. 609 intersection near I-95, and its text says the fort site lies a few miles to the southwest. The database lists the marker year as 1976; the 2009 column recalled the original sign going up in 1975. Either way it is older than most of the Vero Beach markers that tell the town's own story.

That story starts much later. The City of Vero Beach marker says settlement of the area did not occur until the 1880s and that a post office named Vero opened in 1891, so Fort Vinton predates the town that now gives the marker its address by about half a century.