Fort Jefferson on Garden Key

8 April 2015 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Miami / South Florida, Palaces, Castles, Manors, Parks Reading Time:  8 minutes

Fort Jefferson © U.S. National Park Service

Fort Jefferson © U.S. National Park Service

Fort Jefferson is a massive but unfinished coastal fortress. It is the largest masonry structure in the Americas, and is composed of over 16 million bricks. The Dry Tortugas are part of Monroe County. The fort is located on Garden Key in the lower Florida Keys within the Dry Tortugas National Park, about 70 miles (110 km) west of the island of Key West. A series of engineering studies and bureaucratic delays consumed 17 years, but the construction of Fort Jefferson (named after the third President, Thomas Jefferson) was finally begun on Garden Key in 1846. The new fort would be built so that the existing Garden Key lighthouse and the lighthouse keeper’s cottage would be contained within the walls of the fort. The lighthouse would continue to serve a vital function in guiding ships through the waters of the Dry Tortugas Islands until the current metal light tower was installed atop an adjacent wall of the fort in 1876. The original brick lighthouse tower was taken down in 1877.   read more…

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