The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-04-15
THE FORT AT DRY TORTUGAS.

| 1 It Has Cost Nearly Three Million Dol | lars-It is the Largest Masonry For | tress in the World
 Fort Jefferson, at Dry Tortugas,
 which within a few weeks has been
 awakened from a thirty-year sleep, is
 not only one of the largest and most
 costly military structures of masonry
 in this country, but is also one of the
 most isolated military structures in the world. Built in a part of the country where all manual labor was
 at this time done by slaves, colored | bondmen were of course largely en-
 ployed on it.
 | Passengers by the steamers from | Key West to New Orleans, when four
 or five hours out of port, see three | lonesome structures, rising apparently
 out of the water, with no land in sight, l and no foliage to protect them from l the burning sun of the Gulf of Mexico. | The largest, of the trio is Fort Jeffer- | son, which during the civil war was
 the dreaded military prison of the Dry | Tortugas. The second, mile or more | to the northwest, is the lighthouse | bearing the official name of Tortugas | light, but locally known as Logger head Key light. The third building, l almost within pistol shot of the fort, | is rough, temporary house of boards,
 cheerless and forbidding enough to seem what it has been for some years the pest-house of the Tortugas quar- | antine station.
 | AS the vessel approaches the build i ings it Is seen that each stands upon | it's own little islet of sand and these l three sand keys are all that remain of | the Dry Tortugas. A generation ago | there were several other islands in the | group but the gulf stream has washed | them away. The sharp eye of the l navigator, however, sees that only the sandy tops have disappeared, leaving | the dangerous coral formation close to | the surface With it's double row of | ragged portholes, it's six great bas- | tions, each large enough to be a fort | in itself, and it's broad, granite walled ! moat, Fort Jefferson looks far more l imposing than the modern fort of l earthworks.
 Congress made the first appropria-
 tion of fifty thousand dollars for the
 
 l the work was begun in 1846 Garden | Key, upon which it stands, was not as large as the fort that that was de- signed, and several neighboring islets
 of sand were taken up by the ship
 load and deposited upon the beach to give solidtty to the foundation of granite blocks that reaches far down | into the coral For fifteen years the work dragged slowly on, and at the
 outbreak of the war the fort was still | incomplete and hardly defensible | When it was first garrisoned. in the | winter of 1S60-61 1t had cost $1, 400 900; l for every brick in it's eight-feet-thi | walls, every block of granite, even the
 earth for the five-acre inclosure with | in the walls, had to be carried by sea i from New York and other northern | ports. As soon as the war depart | ment determined to use it for a militia ry prison congress began to lavish | money upon it. In 1860 and 1861 s250,- | 900 was passed, and on the same day | another for $100,000; and later in the | day a third, a total of half million | dollars in a single day. As the fort | filled up with prisoners, many of them 1 of importance, it was proposed to en- large the accommodations by building ! an annex fort on the adjoining Bird ! key, and $650,000 more was appropria- | ted for the purpose. But this project l was abandoned after the plans had | been made, and the money was used upon the original structure. The last l appropriation was made in 1873, and l the garrison was withdrawn in 1878. 1 Up to that time the structure alone | had cost $2,935000. The sole represen- | tative of the army in the fort for years was Ordnance Sergeant William | Keller who painted the old columbi- ads with coal tar once year.
 Since 1888 Fort Jefferson has been used as a federal quarantine station, 1 under the charge of pr. R. D. Murray, and in the summer months it could be | visited only with his permission. The adjutant-general of the army de- scribes the fort as "a double-casema- | ted, hexagonal structure of brick,
 standing on Garden Key, Tortugas, | the most southwestern part of the | Florida reefs, in latitude "A degrees 37
 minutes AT seconds north, longitude S2 | degrees 52 minutes 53 seconds west" | In 1864, he adds, 'it contained about one thousand prisoners. They key
 contains seven acres, five of which
 are within the walls of the fort The
 average night of the key above the
 sea is three and one-half feet, but an
 excavation over two and one-half feet | develops the primitive coral and the | salt water of the gulf"
 The landing place is in front of a wooden structure in which is the fu-