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Published: April 11th 2017
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View from Fort JeffersonGarden Key, Florida
Dry Tortugas is one of the gems of the National Park System and is a highlight of our trip so far. For those who think Key West is the westernmost end of the keys, you have to rethink your geography. The park originally encompassed eleven small keys, although only seven of them are now above water. They are at the westernmost end of the coral reef that starts just south of Miami and runs south and west from there almost 200 miles - the third largest coral reef in the world.
Known as one of the most difficult parks to get to, there are no roads here and your only means of transportation is by boat or seaplane. The park is a full 70 miles west of Key West. There are charter seaplanes and various sizes of charter boats that will take you there for a substantial fee. Probably the most reasonable way, though, is through the parks concessionaire, The Yankee Freedom III which runs daily from Key West to the park. While not exactly cheap, the price gets you breakfast and lunch, and admission to the park, in addition to some entertaining and informative banter
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Just the Wide Open Sea while traveling. (They also sell Dramamine for those who need it, and pretty good frozen cocktails on the trip back, for those who want them). You can camp on the island for up to four nights, but not in your RV - it is strictly pack in and pack out. There are no stores, no fresh water, and only composting toilets for use when the boat isn't there. There are a few rangers and park service volunteers who live there full time, but if you are camping, you are expected to be totally self-sufficient. If we were a little younger, this would have to be quite the experience.
In the company of 150 other day travelers, we boarded the boat at the Key West Seaport just around 7:30 and had left the dock by 8:00. Seas were a little choppy and Joan bought a dose of dramamine - she certainly wasn't the only one. Once out of the harbor, the crew set up for breakfast - a buffet of bagel sandwiches, fruit salad, coffee and tea. It was tasty and fresh and there was plenty of everything. Seating was very tight and I ended up eating standing up because
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From Inside the Boat this family of eight just had to sit everyone together and my little chair was in their domain.
After breakfast, Joan and I went to the bow to watch the seas. As the islands disappeared, we were soon looking at ocean, or rather gulf, seas in every direction. The entire trip takes a little more than two hours so there is a lot of time to just contemplate the ocean experience. We were in 3-5 foot waves, but the wind was at our backs, so it really wasn't too rough. And we watched for wildlife along the way. According to the captain, the sea floor was generally about 20-30 feet below us, although we crossed a couple of channels that were maybe 60 feet deep. I suspect that the generally shallow seas are exactly because of the coral reef below us. So there was probably a lot going on down below, but not so much on the surface.
We saw a few birds, of course - pelicans and other sea birds which I don't pretend to be able to name. But the highlight of the trip out, for me, was a sea turtle. It was swimming at the
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Approaching Fort Jefferson surface, perhaps getting some fresh air, and was just off to the port (that's left to landlubbers) side of the bow. He was about four feet long, not counting the flippers. That was pretty cool, I thought, because 'Tortugas' means turtles in Spanish. Although endangered now, these animals were everywhere on these islands when Ponce de Leon discovered them in the early 1500s. They were nesting areas here and were so numerous that they were a source of food for mariners for a century or so.
The park covers over a hundred square miles of surface area, but most of that is underwater. As you approach the park and the main island of Garden Key, two things stand out - the fabulous colors and texture of the water and the imposing structure of Fort Jefferson.
The fort is just mind-boggling - the largest island fort every built and the largest brick structure of the 1800's - one has to consider the how's and whys of this effort out here in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. Made of 16 million bricks (let that number sink in for a bit), each of which had to be transported across
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We have Arrived. Just one (of six) sides of the Fort miles of sea to this small little island. The first several million bricks came from the Pensacola area, but as Florida began to side with the confederacy, the union decided to get their bricks from a more reliable source and began shipping them down from New England.
We saw another example of building forts with Fort Pickens and Gulf Island Seashore. Fort Pickens, though, was built with the express purpose of protecting the Pensacola harbor. What explains building the largest fort ever miles from anything in the middle of the Gulf? Turns out that it is also protecting a harbor - the natural one in and around Dry Tortugas. These keys create almost a circle and shield the interior of the circle from rough ocean seas - in fact the central area of these keys is remarkably quiet. It turns out that this sheltered area was large enough to harbor almost the entire Union fleet. And if it was that large, then it could also harbor nearly the entire fleet of an opposing country, such as Britain was during the War of 1812. So the decision to protect the Tortugas was actually a pre-emptive strategy to prevent an opposing
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Yankee Freedom III Dockside fleet from having a valuable harbor that close to US interests in the Gulf. It was an outer boundary of sorts.
But sometimes plans have trouble confronting reality. The plans for Fort Jefferson included a three tier structure that was ultimately to have about 450 cannons in place. These cannons were designed so that, any spot out on the surrounding range of water (about 3 miles) would be within a target zone of 125 of those cannons. Each of these cannons could be fired and reloaded within one minute. Do the math, and that means that any ship within range could be hammered by 125 cannonballs per minute. Now figure that each of those cannon balls weighed about 400 pounds and you have a formidable force.
To sustain that kind of firepower, required a massive structure. And hence a fort with eight-foot-thick walls and 16 million bricks. What they hadn't considered though, was the fact that the coral reef upon which this building was to be built wouldn't support that weight. The result was a settling structure that developed cracks in those huge walls that undid the huge water system built into the fort and eventually did the
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Part of the Moat Around the Fort fort in. It was never finished and in the 1870s, after the development of iron-clad ships and cannons that could destroy even 8 foot walls, the fort was decommissioned, never reaching completion. In fact, like at Fort Pickens, not a single shot was fired from a cannon here (and only about a fourth of the guns planned were actually installed.). All that remains is a ruin for tourists to gawk at.
And take pictures from. The beaches and waters here are remarkable. Snorkeling and scuba diving are prime activities to explore the reefs here. Scuba diving is a bit beyond our pay grade, and snorkeling seemed like too much energy after touring the fort. Instead, Joan and I settled into a spot on the South Beach and enjoyed the sun and the soft lapping sounds of small waves on the beach.
Although it looks like a white sand beach, those aren't normal sand crystals. Instead it is made up of the remains of coral and other reef animals. Tiny little round ooids, the calcium carbonate of crushed shells and coral remains, make up the 'sand'. Wading in the shallow beach cools the heat from the hot sun.
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A View inside of the Fort We got back on the boat which left promptly at 3:00, returning to Key West around 5:30. Seas were rougher going back and there were quite a few folks who looked as green as the surrounding waters. What a beautiful and interesting park - This is definitely a destination park. (17.1.34)
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Margret R
non-member comment
Beautiful
Very Beautiful Place to visit www.weslakeresort.com