Evening star., 1934-09-16
KEY WEST, Fla. (by maiD.

KEY WEST Fla. (by maiD.
- ONE day hope to write book to be
called 1.-THE Book Of Marvels." In it I
shall list and describe the things
things made by the hand of man
= which, having been seen by my own
eyes, impressed me as being the Won
ders Of the world. For example. along with
the Pyramids and the Panama Canal and the
Great Wall of China and the Tai Mahal, I
shall include the Inca Citadel Of Machu Picctu
in Peru, the temples of Baalbec in Syria and
Angkod in Indo China. Certainly one of the
chapters of this book will be devoted to a
marvel that astonished me fully as much as
any Of the others-the marvel Of Fort Jeffer-
son, Monroe County, Fla u. S. A.
For a dozen reasons Fort Jefferson should
be placed high on my list Of wonders.
1t is the largest masonry building erected in
America before the skyscraper era.
1T is the largest all-masonry fort in the
Western Hemisphere-a mile in circumference.
1t Is built around fiat coral key, one of
the Dry Tortugas Islets, so miles out from
Key West in the Gulf of Mexico.
Fifty million bricks were used In its con-
struction, tons upon tons of granite, iron,
cement. And every brick and every ton had
to be transported by sailboat from Philadel-
phia and New York, $500 miles away.
The fort mounted 500 guns, many of them
of 15-inch caliber.
Built from 1846 to 1860 by the Federal Gov
ernment it was the only spot, along with Key
West. within Confederate borders that re-
manned in the hands Of the Unionists through
out the Civil War.
1t served as the greatest and most murder
Gus American prison of the nineteenth CEN
tury.
It was our own Devils Island filled with
traitors, political offenders, spies, as well as
criminals.
The most infamous and most tragic mis-
carriage of justice in our history had Fort
Jefferson for its scene
Fantastically costly in money and Ife-m
lions of dollars were spent, thousands of la
borers perished-it remains the most colossal
engineering folly ever perpetrated by our Gov
eminent
A ND what mystery surrounds It'll Who or
dered it built? Who chose this lost isle.
barren, waterless, hurricane swept for the
site? Who designed the fort? Who supplied
the mountains of material and the army of
slaves for this titanic white elephant? No.
body knows. There are no records. It's just
there, blocking out the horizon with its grim
and inscrutable presence. 1t must have bank
rupt the Treasury of the 1850s. But now it is
utterly deserted except for the ghosts of the
men who perished here by the thousands and
for the sea birds that have come in to take
possession of this vasteSt ruin in all America.
From my little fishing boat. engaged at
Key west, I first saw Fort Jefferson. And
never have beheld so foreign picture within
the boundaries of America. Surely this couldn't
be my own country-I must have drifted of
my course to one of the twelfth century CRU
sadie strongholds in Syria to ancient
French castle in Touraine, or upon some
Norman keep from which William the Con-
querer set sail for England. Bastion and bat
tlement. round towers crenellations rampartS
all anchored immovably to the coral key,
and all surrounded by a moat and a break
water wall that wars eternally with the waves.
This strange, mysterious citadel in the sea
you approach it, with stern, forbidding face.
Each of its six sides is nearly thousand feet
long, 80 high and 60 thick At each of the six
corners a huge, squat tower bulges out and
enables the tower garrison to rake the wall
and moat with horizontal fire. From each
wall three rows of guns, 80 to a side once
glared down so menacingly that few enemies
ever dared come in range of them Most of
the guns are gone, stolen by Cubans for scrap
iron, but the biggest ones still remain on the
topmost ramparts and reveal clearly what
Gibraltar of defiant strength Fort Jefferson
once was.
In 1s46 the greatest trade route for Amer
lean shipping lay through the straits of Florida
and right past the Dry Tortugas. The mill
tary authorities in President Polk's admins
uation decided that this richest avenue of