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Dry Tortugas National Park (2)
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Inside the Walls
The walls of the fort are about a half mile around the perimeter, and the grounds inside the walls are spacious. The area was designed to accommodate 1500 troops and included barracks, parade grounds, magazines, batteries, and other features. The view below looks toward the west and shows the walls and some remaining officer's quarters in front.
This view also looks out across the grounds inside the fort toward the west wall. The ruins in the left foreground are all that's left of soldier's barracks.
A view back toward the north walls is featured below.
Another part of the fort --a portion of the magazine can be seen here.
This is a view of the northwest wall of the fort. The grassy areas within the walls of the park were once used as a parade grounds.
Neither Garden Key, nor any of the other Tortugas, have any source of fresh water. Rainwater was (and is) collected on the tops of the walls of the fort into cisterns capable of holding a million and a half gallons. Currently this water is currently reserved for on-site employees; visitors must bring in their own water or other liquid refreshment with them.
Below is a view of the northeast walls of the fort.
A view along the northwest wall shows some of the ruins within the walls. These are all that remains of the officer's quarters which once stood on this site. The fort was originally designed to accommodate 1000 men (10 companies), with 2 apartment buildings for officers.
The view below looks back toward the southwest near the entrance to the fort. The harbor light can be seen above the center of the picture. The ruined walls in the center are another portion of the old officer's quarters.
A closeup of the harbor light can be seen below, looking back toward the north. This lighthouse was built to guide mariners entering the Tortugas Harbor.
The building shown below in the eastern section of the fort is the powder magazine where ammunition for the weapons was once stored.
The other side of the magazine, which was never actually finished, is shown below.
Another structure located within the walls of the fort is the hot shot oven, seen below. This was used to create incendiary projectiles which were to be shot from the fort's cannon. The projectiles were loaded into the high end of the structure and heated cherry read as they moved own through it. Even after shot from cannon these projectiles remained hot enough to produce fires on wooden ships.
The fort was powerfully fortified with weaponry like the massive Rodman Smoothbore cannon shown below. Weapons of this sort arrived in 1874. The 15 inch guns weighed 22 tons and were capable of firing a 450 pound projectile.
Another of the cannon which were installed at the fort were the parrot rifles, one of which is shown below along the top of the south wall. These 8 inch guns were capable of firing very accurately with a range of up to 4000 yards. Ironically, no cannons were ever actually fired from the fort during all of its time as a military facility.
The fort was designed to accommodate 450 guns, an impressive array of firepower. The guns were arranged in three tiers, including along the top of the walls, as shown above, and on the second story within the walls as well. The arches and passageway below provided access to the many gun rooms where cannon on the second tier were located.
Looking out through the window of a gun room provides an interesting view of the Gulf of Mexico.
In the 1860's and 1870's the fort was used as a prison, especially for deserters in the Civil War. The first prisoners began to arrive in 1861, and as many as 800 men were imprisoned there during the war.
Among the prisoners who served sentences at Fort Jefferson were four convicted of conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. Among these were the probably innocent Dr. Samuel Mudd, who set the broken leg of assassin John Wilkes Booth during his escape. Mudd served heroically as a physician for three months during a yellow fever epidemic in 1867, in which 270 of the 400 inhabitants acquired the disease and 38 died. Mudd's work was recognized and he was finally paroled 1869 and left the fort.
The picture below shows the cell where Mudd lived during his sentence.
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