Gulf Islands

The words

1. Beach Mouse

   Perdido Key beach mice shelter in burrows among dunes and coastal scrub. At night they emerge to feed on seeds, fruit and insects, with sea oats providing an important food source.

   Did you know?

   Seeds stored by beach mice sometimes remain uneaten and sprout, helping establish plants whose roots stabilize the dunes.

   Park Service: Perdido Key beach mouse (opens a new tab)

2. Brown Pelican

   Brown pelicans gather along the seashore’s coast and dive for fish. They fold their wings before entering the water, using their large bills to capture prey beneath the surface.

   Did you know?

   Air sacs beneath a brown pelican’s skin help cushion its impact when it plunges into the water for fish.

   Park Service: Brown pelican (opens a new tab)

3. Davis Bayou

   Davis Bayou represents the mainland salt-marsh side of Gulf Islands in Mississippi. Its winding waterways connect with Stark and Halstead bayous, supporting plant and animal life above and below the water.

   Park Service: Davis Bayou marshes (opens a new tab) · Park Service: Gulf Coast ecosystems (opens a new tab)

4. Fort Barrancas

   Completed in 1844, Fort Barrancas guarded Pensacola Bay from a bluff. Enslaved laborers shaped its defensive earthen slope, hauling sand and planting grass to protect the surface from erosion.

   Park Service: Fort Barrancas history (opens a new tab) · Park Service: Enslaved fort laborers (opens a new tab)

5. Fort Pickens

   Fort Pickens guarded the entrance to Pensacola Bay from western Santa Rosa Island. Enslaved men built the fort under Army engineer William Chase, completing the massive brick defenses in 1834.

   Park Service: Fort Pickens construction (opens a new tab)

6. Geronimo

   The Army exiled Geronimo, an Apache medicine man and warrior, to Florida in 1886 and separated him from his family. He never returned to his homeland and died at Fort Sill in 1909.

   Park Service: Apache imprisonment (opens a new tab)

7. Horn Island

   Horn Island’s live oaks, pines and shrubs shelter birds, reptiles and other wildlife. Designated wilderness with Petit Bois in 1978, it preserves a barrier-island landscape off Mississippi’s coast.

   Did you know?

   Artist Walter Anderson repeatedly rowed to Horn Island, making paintings and sketches inspired by its wildlife, light and changing colors.

   Park Service: Horn Island habitats (opens a new tab) · Park Service: Walter Anderson’s island art (opens a new tab)

8. Opal Beach

   Opal Beach lies on Santa Rosa Island between Pensacola Beach and Navarre Beach. Its visitor area spans the island’s Gulf-facing and sound-facing sides, showing two different coastal settings.

   Park Service: Santa Rosa and Opal Beach (opens a new tab) · Park Service: Opal Beach’s setting (opens a new tab)

9. Perdido Key

   Perdido Key straddles the Florida–Alabama boundary. Its dunes and coastal scrub shelter beach mice, with the seashore’s Johnson Beach area forming part of their habitat alongside neighboring state parks.

   Park Service: Perdido Key beach mouse (opens a new tab)

10. Petit Bois

    Petit Bois Island combines ponds, lagoons and marshes with a small slash-pine forest. Seagrass beds in its shallow waters shelter young fish, adding underwater habitat to the island’s protected wilderness.

    Park Service: Petit Bois habitats (opens a new tab)

11. Quartz Sand

    The seashore’s sand contains quartz, a hard mineral eroded from the southern Appalachian Mountains. Rivers carried those grains toward the coast, where currents moved them westward along the shoreline.

    Did you know?

    The beaches look white even though their quartz grains are clear; coastal currents wash away much of the finer material.

    Park Service: Coastal sand origins (opens a new tab)

12. Redoubt

    An enclosed defensive fortification built to protect a position.

    Advanced Redoubt protected the landward approaches to Fort Barrancas and the Pensacola Navy Yard. Enslaved workers began construction in 1845; free workers completed the fort in 1870.

    Park Service: Advanced Redoubt history (opens a new tab)

13. Santa Rosa

    Santa Rosa Island forms a natural barrier between open water and Pensacola Bay. Its beach and dune habitats support nesting shorebirds and sea turtles, with sea oats and other coastal grasses growing in the sand.

    Park Service: Fort Pickens construction (opens a new tab) · Park Service: Gulf Coast ecosystems (opens a new tab)

14. Ship Island

    Ship Island’s anchorage gave it military importance along Mississippi’s coast. Fort Massachusetts was built to protect shipping and a supply depot; paid workers and prisoners of war helped complete it in 1866.

    Park Service: Ship Island’s fort (opens a new tab)

15. Snowy Plover

    Snowy plovers blend into the seashore’s pale beaches. They nest in shallow ground depressions lined with shell fragments and other material, and forage by running, pausing and picking small prey from the sand.

    Did you know?

    Snowy plover chicks leave the nest within three hours of hatching, flattening against the ground when a parent signals danger.

    Park Service: Snowy plover ecology (opens a new tab)