242 FLORIDA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY-I5TH ANNUAL REPORT

 CHAPTER X

 DEVELOPMENT AND POSSIBILITIES OF THE CLAY INDUSTRY IN FLORIDA

 EARLY HISTORY
 Common building bricks have been produced in Florida since the early days of its history. Ruins of the old English and Spanish settlements in the vicinity of Pensacola indicate that brick were used to a large extent in the construction of dams, foundations, fireplaces, etc., in the eighteenth century. The very earliest enduring structures, both at St. Augustine and at Pensacola1 were of stone, but later buildings were of brick. While it is not known that these brick were made from local clays, it is curious to note that brick plants are now operated in close proximity to some of these old Spanish and English landmarks and that clay suitable for common brick is found underlying many of them. It seems improbable that the brick used here would have been imported. The exact date when brick were first used is not recorded. In 1766, clay from Pensacola was shipped to Josiah Wedgewood's pottery in England, for experimental purposes2. Williams, writing in 1827, states that both brick and fire-brick were manufactured in West Florida and shipped to New Orleans.3
 During the nineteenth century, both before and after the Civil War, the Anglo-Saxon settlers, then blazing the trail for the permanent settlement of the Florida of today, operated small brick-yards to supply their immediate needs. Many of these crude plants, which are now abandoned, may be found throughout the central, northern and western portions of the State. Fort Jefferson, on the Dry Tortugas, in the Gulf of Mexico, was built in 1860 of brick made on Escambia Bay.4

 RECENT HISTORY
 In the last three or four decades, eighteen or twenty plants, manufacturing structural materials, have been in operation more or less continuously, and during this time the rank of Florida, as determined by

 IGonzalez, Mrs. S. J., Pensacola, Its Early History, Quarterly of the Florida Historical Society, p. 10, April, 1909.
 2Meteyard, Eliza, Life of Josiah Wedgewood, Vol. I, p. 471, 1865.
 3Williams, John Lee, A View of West Florida, p. 69, 1827.
 4Crary, J. W., Sr., Brickmaking and Burning, pp. 14 and 35, 1890.