 THE DRY TORTUGAS AND FORT JEFFERSON
Dry Tortugas National Park preserves Fort Jefferson and the Dry Tortugas islands of the Florida Keys. The park covers 101 mi2 (262 km2), mostly water, about 68 miles (109 km) west of Key West in the Gulf of Mexico.
Dry Tortugas National Park is famous for abundant sea life, colorful coral reefs and legends of shipwrecks and sunken treasures. The park's centerpiece is Fort Jefferson, a massive but unfinished coastal fortress that was rendered obsolete by the invention of the rifled cannon. It is the largest masonary structure in the Western Hemisphere, and is comprised of over 16 million bricks.
The fort was eventually converted into a prison for Union Army deserters and the accomplices implicated in President Abraham Lincoln's assassination. The most famous of these was Dr. Samuel Mudd.
The U.S. Army abandoned the fortress in 1874 and a nearby sooty tern rookery was a favored hunting ground for egg collectors, until a wildlife refuge was established in 1908.
On January 4, 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt designated it Fort Jefferson National Monument. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 10, 1970. On October 26, 1992 the Dry Tortugas, including Fort Jefferson, was established as a national park.
The islands do not exhibit any standing fresh water or even seasonal streams, hence their name. Owing to the potential difficulties of survival in such conditions one of these islands were used as the location for the filming of a military survival film used to train aircraft personnel.
The park is roughly 70 miles or 110 kilometers by boat west of Key West, and plays host to almost 80,000 visitors each year. Activities include snorkeling, picnicking, scuba diving, saltwater fishing and birdwatching.
The most popular bird watching event is the sooty tern gathering, the nesting season on Bush Key between February and September involving an estimated 100,000 terns. Bush Key remains closed to visitors during the nesting season, but bird watchers with binoculars or telephoto lenses can watch the spectacle from Fort Jefferson.
Other bird species in the park include noddies, brown pelicans, frigate birds, masked boobies, roseate terns, brown boobies and double-crested cormorants.
GEOGRAPHY OF THE DRY TORTUGAS
The keys are low and irregular, and have a thin growth of mangrove. In general, they rise abruptly from deep water. They are continually changing in size and shape. The Tortugas Atoll has had up to 11 islets during the past two centuries. The smaller ones of the islands have disappeared and reappeared multiple times as a result of hurricane impact.
The total area of the islets, some of which are little more than sand bars just above the water mark, is about 580,000 m². Especially the area figures of the smaller keys are subject to change over time. There are seven islets, which are from West to East:
• Loggerhead Key, with Dry Tortugas Light (lighthouse, 46 meters high), 250 by 1200 meters in size, with an area of 260,000 m² the largest, 1 meter high,
• Garden Key, with Fort Jefferson, and an abandoned lighthouse over 20 meters high in the southeast, 4 km east of Loggerhead Key, 400 by 500 meters in size, with an area of 170,000 m² the second largest
• Bush Key (formerly Hog Island, because of the hogs that were raised there to provide fresh meat for the prisoners at Fort Jefferson), just a few meters east of Garden Key (actually connected by a sand bar since 1998), 150 by 900 meters in size, area 120,000 m² (making it the third largest), less than 1 meter high. Bush Key is the site of a large tern rookery. It is closed to visitors from April to September to protect nesting Sooty Terns and Noddy Terns.
• Long Key, 50 meters south of the eastern end of Bush key, 50 by 200 meters in size, area 8,000 m²
• Hospital Key, so called because a hospital for the inmates of Fort Jefferson had been built there in the 1870s (formerly called Middle Key or Sand Key), 2.5 km northeast of Garden Key and Bush Key, 70 meters in diameter, area 4,000 m², 1 meter high
• Middle Key, 2.5 km east of Hospital key, 90 meters in diameter, area 6,000 m²
• East Key, 2 km east of Middle Key, 100 by 200 meters in size, area 16,000 m², over 2 meters high
• Pulaski Shoal (Pulaski Reef), marking the northeast edge of the group at 24°41'36"N, 82°46'24", is not an island, but the location of a lighthouse, Pulaski Shoal Light, with a height of 17 meters.
The three westernmost keys, which are also the three largest keys (Loggerhead Key, Garden Key, and Bush Key), make up about 93 percent of the total land area of the group.
From Wikipedia.org, the Free Encyclopedia
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HISTORY:
In 1861, the United States government completed Fort Jefferson on Garden Key, and this bastion remained in Union hands throughout the Civil War. It later was used as a prison until abandoned in 1874. During the 1880s, the Navy established a base at Tortuga; and it subsequently set up a coaling (refueling) and a wireless (radio) station there as well. During World War I, a seaplane base was established on the islet; but it was abandoned soon thereafter.
An account of a visit to the fort at the Dry Tortugas by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Justice-to-be Robert H. Jackson can be found in the book, That Man: An Insider's Portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt  , by Robert H. Jackson, edited and introduced by John Q. Barrett (Oxford University Press, New York, 2003).
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ENVIRONMENT:
The islands get their name from their distinctive characteristics: Dry because none of the islands have fresh water and Tortugas because their low mound shape resembles tortoises (tortugas in Spanish) sunning themselves. They are not related to the Caribbean island of Tortuga, near Hispaniola.
The islands are home to Dry Tortugas National Park, and are only accessible by boat or seaplane, making them a popular birding destination. The large seabird colony, includes Sooty Terns, Brown Noddy, Masked Booby and Magnificent Frigatebird, and the regular occurrence of Caribbean vagrant birds.
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