COLLIER COUNTY, FLORIDA—Shawn Beightol, a high school chemistry teacher, led a small expedition in southern Florida’s Big Cypress Preserve to look for Fort Harrell, built by the U.S. Army in 1837 as an outpost for soldiers fighting the second Seminole War. “I’d like to see a monument placed there for the people who served in that godforsaken location 170 years ago. Their story needs to be told,” Beightol told the Sun Sentinel. On the team’s fifth expedition into the Everglades, after studying historic maps, engineering surveys, and aerial photographs, they found a clearing with postholes dug in limestone. “Once we saw the holes, I knew we had found it,” said expedition member Tony Pernas, who is an employee of the U.S. National Park Service. Traces of the fort were last seen during construction work in the early twentieth century.
