50 Fun Facts About Dry Tortugas National Park

The Dry Tortugas lie in which body of water, about 68 miles west of Key West?

The islands are the westernmost and most isolated of the Florida Keys, reachable only by boat or seaplane.

What is the centerpiece of the park?

It is the largest brick masonry structure in the Western Hemisphere and among US forts only Fort Monroe and Fort Adams are bigger.

Roughly how many bricks went into Fort Jefferson?

It covers 16 acres of Garden Key; among US forts only Fort Monroe and Fort Adams are larger.

Who gave the islands the name 'Tortugas' after visiting in June 1513?

His men caught 160 sea turtles there; it is the second-oldest surviving European place-name in the United States.

Why are the islands called 'Dry'?

That lack of water is why the fort was built with an elaborate rain-cistern system that mostly failed.

What share of the park's area is water?

The seven or so keys total only about 144 acres of land, and their number changes as storms and tides expose or drown sandbars.

What is the highest natural elevation anywhere in the Dry Tortugas, on Loggerhead Key?

Loggerhead is the largest key at about 64 acres and carries the 151-foot lighthouse; most of the other keys stand barely three feet above the sea.

How big was Garden Key, the fort's island, before construction began?

The fort now covers 16 acres and the key about 42; the primitive campground sits just south of the walls.

Bush Key was formerly called Hog Island. Why?

It is now a huge rookery, closed from February to September for nesting terns and noddies.

How did the small key northeast of Fort Jefferson earn its present, medical-sounding name?

It was earlier called Middle Key or Sand Key and covers barely an acre; Middle Key itself vanishes for weeks or months at a time.

In which year did construction of Fort Jefferson begin?

Plans by Lt Montgomery Meigs, based on a Joseph Totten design, were approved that November; the work was only half done by 1860 and never finished.

Who did most of the labour building Fort Jefferson before 1863?

About 17 percent of Key West's enslaved population was leased to the Army engineers between 1847 and 1860; the practice ended after the Emancipation Proclamation.

How many sides does Fort Jefferson have?

Two curtain walls measure 325 feet and four measure 477 feet; each of two casemate tiers held 150 guns with 150 more on top.

How many times were Fort Jefferson's big guns fired in anger?

By 1872 there were 243 large-calibre guns including six 15-inch Rodmans on the top tier, none ever used.

What went wrong with the fort's ingenious system of cisterns hidden inside its walls?

Only the runoff stored under the parade ground stayed fresh; two steam condensers distilled 7,000 gallons of seawater a day during the Civil War.

Which doctor, jailed at Fort Jefferson 1865–69, had set John Wilkes Booth's broken leg?

He arrived with three other Lincoln conspirators in July 1865, tried to stow away on a transport that September and was thrown into the 'dungeon'.

What was written over the door of the fort's dungeon where Mudd was held after his escape attempt?

The line is adapted from Canto III of Dante's Inferno.

What did Dr Mudd do at the fort in 1867 that helped earn his pardon?

The outbreak killed fellow conspirator Michael O'Laughlen and the post surgeon; the president pardoned Mudd in 1869.

Which president pardoned the doctor in 1869?

A military commission had sentenced him to life, escaping execution by a single vote; his conviction itself was never overturned.

Which 'Chicago Conspiracy' leader, imprisoned at the fort, supposedly drowned escaping by boat?

The Englishman arrived in October 1865; Lincoln had earlier substituted Dry Tortugas imprisonment for execution for convicted deserters.

Which Black regiment was stationed at Fort Jefferson at the end of the Civil War?

Made up of soldiers from Louisiana, it relieved a New York regiment in September 1865, the day Mudd tried to stow away.

Which US Navy warship took on coal at the Dry Tortugas in 1898 before its fateful voyage to Havana?

The fleet gathered there for the Spanish–American War; the Navy had run a coaling station on the key since the 1880s.

Who ran a marine biology laboratory on Loggerhead Key from 1903 to 1939?

It was called the best-equipped tropical marine station in the world; its research vessel Anton Dohrn went to Woods Hole when it closed.

Which president proclaimed Fort Jefferson National Monument on 4 January 1935?

He used the Antiquities Act; the WPA then restored the crumbling fort, and Congress made it Dry Tortugas National Park in the 1990s.

In which year did the monument become Dry Tortugas National Park?

It shares a superintendent with Everglades National Park and is part of the UNESCO Everglades & Dry Tortugas Biosphere Reserve.

During the 1995–96 government shutdown, Key West residents did what?

They had raised money to keep the park open but nobody would take it; officials who tried to enter the fort were cited, and the case was dropped in court.

Who found the 1622 wreck of the galleon Nuestra Señora de Atocha near the Dry Tortugas in 1985?

The 'Atocha Motherlode' was worth about $450 million: 40 tons of gold and silver, 114,000 pieces of eight, emeralds and 1,000 silver ingots.

Which Royal Navy ship wrecked in the Dry Tortugas in 1742, stranding its crew on Garden Key?

The castaways fought off a Spanish sloop before sailing to Jamaica in several small boats.

How many bird species are on the park's official list?

Only eight nest there regularly, but in April dozens of migrants can pass through in a day and land in the fort's parade ground.

The park has the only nesting colonies in the contiguous US of which seabird?

Brown noddies, magnificent frigatebirds and masked boobies also breed nowhere else in the lower 48; Bush Key hosts the huge tern rookery.

What did the cold wave of January 1977 do to the park's reefs?

Once-extensive staghorn and elkhorn formations became rubble fields; the park is now patch reef and coral rubble.

The Dry Tortugas are the driest place in Florida. How much rain falls there in a year?

Sandy soil and fierce sun add to the drought feel; there has never been a recorded frost, and summer highs sit around 91 °F.

What is the name of the official ferry that carries visitors from Key West?

Seaplanes are the other option; there are no roads, shops or restaurants, so visitors must bring all food and water.

How many primitive campsites does the Garden Key campground offer?

Camping there is the only overnight option in the park apart from a private boat.

In 2007 the park designated 46 square miles as what?

Boats there must use mooring buoys or docks; about 54 percent of the park stays open to fishing.

Cuban migrants sometimes land in the park in homebuilt boats known as what?

The remote park has scant resources to house arrivals and is hours from the nearest Coast Guard unit; communications rely on a satellite link and an old Air Force tower.

What was the park's peak visitor count, reached in 2000?

Numbers slipped to an average of about 63,000 a year in the following decade.

The Dry Tortugas Light on Loggerhead Key, operational from 1858, is notable for what?

It replaced the Garden Key light and took over its first-order Fresnel lens; it was switched off in 2015.

When the first Garden Key lighthouse was lit in 1826, what else stood on the key?

The brick tower was razed in 1877 for an iron one atop the fort; that light was automated in 1912 and switched off in 1924.

Which naturalist visited the Tortugas in 1832, and which scientist followed in 1858?

Agassiz also accompanied engineer Joseph Totten to inspect the fort in 1855.

Which hurricane hit the islands in August 2004, the day before a film crew's plane crashed nearby?

Cinematographer Neal Fredericks died shooting scenery for the film CrossBones; Hurricane Ian struck the islands again in September 2022.

What happened to Bird Key, once the burial ground for Union soldiers?

Southwest Key, North Key and Northeast Key had all vanished by 1875; the islands constantly change with storms and sea level.

The huge fort at the heart of the park is named after which US president?

Among US forts only Fort Monroe in Virginia and Fort Adams in Rhode Island are larger, and it sits in Florida's Monroe County.

Dry Tortugas shares a superintendent with which other national park?

The two also form the Everglades & Dry Tortugas Biosphere Reserve, set up by UNESCO in 1976 under its Man and the Biosphere Programme.

Which invasive fish, found in the park's waters, prompted a management-plan review in 2015?

On land, an eradication programme has already removed invasive Casuarina trees and agave from Loggerhead Key.

How many sea turtles did Ponce de León catch at the islands in 1513, inspiring the name Tortugas?

The name is the second-oldest surviving European place-name in the United States; 'Dry' was added for the lack of fresh water.

Fort Jefferson's 16 million bricks were supplied by a firm based in which Gulf Coast city?

By August 1855 some 233 white contract labourers worked alongside enslaved men who, in Albert Manucy's words, were 'the backbone of the labor gang'.

What distinction does the name 'Tortugas' hold among European place names in the United States?

Ponce de León bestowed it on 21 June 1513, having caught 160 turtles at the islands.

The Black infantry regiment stationed at Fort Jefferson at the end of the Civil War was raised in which state?

Between 1847 and 1860 about 17 per cent of Key West's enslaved people had been leased to the Army Corps of Engineers to build the fort.

Who drew up the plans for Fort Jefferson, working from a design by Joseph Totten?

Wright supervised the start of construction in December 1846, while Lee had written in 1845 recommending the islands be reserved for the military.