The US Army started building Fort Jefferson in 1846, twenty one years after a lighthouse was built on Garden Key to guide shipping past the shoals separating the Gulf of Mexico from the Straits of Florida and passage to and from the Eastern Seaboard. These days the anchorage to the south of the fort is occupied mostly by recreational sailors with commercial fishermen stopping by in season (no commercial fishing is allowed in the national park) but in the 19th century the deep waters around the fort were a refuge for ocean sailing commercial ships.
The one big thing everyone will always tell you about the Fort is that it is built of 16 million bricks. And those bricks came from various places on the east coast which is why there are two distinct shades of red used in the construction:
According to people who know, the masonry in the fort is a work of art that would be hard to reproduce today, consisting as it does of hundreds of unsupported arches. This is one such example, a particularly spectacular one which covers the main magazine inside the fort, the place where they stored gunpowder:
The whole fort is a honeycomb of arches built a hundred and fifty years ago and still standing:
The army labored on for decades piling brick upon brick, until in 1874, after a particularly virulent outbreak of yellow fever they gave up and walked away. During those almost thirty years of occupation the fort had served as a garrison for between 250 and 400 extremely bored soldiers, then during the Civil War it became a prison camp and president Lincoln commuted death sentences for desertion into prison terms at the remote fort.
The cannon I'm leaning up against is a Rodman, one of several hundred dragged to the fort but never used for anything more serious than target practice. Rifled barrels made brick defenses obsolete and the fort lost it's purpose before it came close to being finished. Later it became a staging point for the Spanish American war and then steam ships which stopped by to pick up coal after they added coal docks to the fort. They built two docks on iron posts which have rotted away almost completely but the pilings that reman make excellent growing platforms for coral and thus are excellent snorkling spots. These pilings are the easternmost set shown next to a Privilege catamaran leaving the harbor:
The exterior of the fort is protected by a brick wall that encloses a moat designed as protection from from wave action, but many of the exterior bricks in the fort wall are still choosing to crumble away:
The casemates for the cannons, many of which were never installed, are rotting under the effects of the damp salt air and the iron shutters are falling apart:
Carol told me they have started replacing them with new shutters- made of fiberglass! You wouldn't know it to look at them:
And then there are all the open windows looking out of the fort:
Inside the fort it's a huge parade ground gone bad- or gone good if you like your parade ground full of leafy green open spaces that resemble manicured parkland.
And the park service markers hint at much construction that went on in here in the bad old days:
Nowadays the barracks and the officers quarters are patches of thick grass in what appear to be enormous brick flower beds:
But some of the stuff is still there and is indeed restored:
The shot furnace was designed to roll cannonballs through red hot embers so that when they came out at the other end they could be lobbed into wooden ships to try to set them on fire. The furnace too has been restored:
The work of restoration has won a six million dollar grant according to Carol, my source of all knowledge related to the fort. Indeed there was a construction crew on the job inside the fort while I wandered around:
Wetting their bricks prior to installing them, as good as new because they are new:
We had bricks in the campground to anchor stuff to the ground in the gusty winds so they aren't all going to waste. And the tops of the wall paradoxically has sand covering some of those bricks, making an interesting pathway around the fort:
One bricked-up corner reminded me of perhaps an ivy covered seat of learning, or a cloister for some reason, not at all a fort:
Viewed from the ferry Fort Jefferson is a Swiss cheese of brick arches:
Solid in it's fragility.
Above is the main entrance to Fort Jefferson which covers 11 acres of Garden Key in the Dry Tortugas. Below is a National Park Service billboard discussing how not to step on coral, but it shows Garden Key quite nicely from the air:
Of the remaining five acres of Garden Key outside the Civil War era fort, a small sliver of trees and sand is given over to a primitive campground (in the bottom right hand corner of the photo). Which was where I spent the end of last week in the company of five women and one other man. After the two ferries landed at the docks on the south side of the fort we had to get all our piles of crap to the campground and find places to set up the tents and distribute the supplies and all that stuff. With five women in the party it's safe to say we weren't going to starve, or run out of clean underwear, but all that comfort weighed a ton for me, the pack mule:
The sand was deep in places and there was lots to do, so Kathy took a nap after she carefully unfolded her camp chair:
Eventually the packages were opened and strewn about a bit so Kathy located her tent which she put up in the bushes, and promptly sacked out one more time:
My wife and I were having our own issues with a loaner tent from Carol the experienced camper in the group. We struggled with bits of string and stakes, and shoved poles hither and yon and eventually, sweating like coal miners, we had what soon came to be known in our camp circles as "The Taj Mahal." It was quite the luxury item, and I was particularly pleased with the location, in the shade of a palm, but open to the strong healthy south east winds. Those and a glass of iced rum were all the refreshment I needed:
Behind us we had a glimpse of the turquoise waters off the swimming beach to the west of the fort, while right next to us, just beyond the moat, the walls of the fort rose above us like a red brick cliff:
It was a most satisfying spot, and it had to be, as this was finally the beach vacation my wife has been asking for every since we got married nearly 15 years ago. We always end up taking wild driving or sailing vacations running all over the place but what she wants, for one solitary vacation is a chance to to sit by the beach and do nothing much. So in this instance I wracked my brains figuring out how to make it comfortable and I came up with a brilliant idea, tested in this case by Dolly who also thought it was pretty sharp:
What you see here is a queen sized Aerobed inflated by a built-in 110 volt air pump that we normally use as a guest bed in our tiny little home. In this case, not having to carry stuff very far, but far enough through the sand, I packed a power pack contraption, basically a battery with built in jumper cables and a 110 volt inverter which I used to silently and efficiently inflate the bed. I have to say I slept like a log both nights. My wife didn't do quite so well, blaming her arthritis for a couple of somewhat fractured nights of near lseeping. She kept giving me weather reports in the morning, telling me I had snored through yet another spectacular thunderstorm in the night. I thought the Aerobed was perfect but what do I know? Before I was done gloating at my own brilliance over the inflated bed snug in my super-sized tent, Kathy, across the campground, had woken up and sprung into action:
And then there was swimming to do, in the swimming area right next to the main channel into the harbor. The water was measured by a friendly ranger who claimed it was 80 degrees (27c) but it felt a lot colder than that:
Other than unpacking the camping gear and setting up the tents, swimming was a major activity. The other preferred camp sites, among the eleven sites on the island, were deeper in the bushes for more shade:
Personally I found this to be stiflingly hot. The alternative was to be in the breeze but with less greenery:
In the background you can see the four composting Clivus toilets which are open for campers only when the ferries aren't at the docks. When the ferries are at the docks, campers can use their fresh water showers and the sea water toilets on board the boats. Sometimes they will also take away extra trash if you treat the crew nicely. They aren't joking when they tell you this is primitive camping, because the rangers provide no facilities at all. Everything you use you bring, including the guacamole:
What facilities there are have undergone some modernization. The old salt water toilets on the dock are gone, replaced by changing rooms, but there is still the weather radio supplemented now by a $1.25 a minute satellite pay phone (pay by credit card) which Cathy reported worked perfectly when she called Key West on it. The rangers also have a satellite phone in case of emergency and there is a helipad next to the docks, which I suppose could be used in an emergency. But the day to day stuff is all up to the campers, bring your own water and pack absolutely everything out. Or in, if you are Carol:
The fee to camp is $3 per person per night and supposedly there is a two week maximum per year, limited to one week at a time though I've never put this to the test. You pay the fee by cash or check and drop payment in the slot as Robert demonstrates, pretty much like any other park in the system:
Then you get down to the serious business of camping, which is eating, and your appetite is whetted by the salt air and all that activity. My wife was cook for the first dinner, spicy chicken sausages and pesto pasta salad. The pasta was prepared at home the sausages weren't:
And so we enjoyed the first evening meal of the trip, eating outdoors in inadequate light, scrunched up around the picnic table on hard benches. And loving every minute of it:
As the sun made it's closing argument on the day:
And thus it was, despite the fact I was in this incredible place, pretty soon I was snoring my head off, full of sausage bread and wine and lots of bracing fresh air.