Posts tagged "State Park"

Fort Jefferson and Dry Tortugas National Park Photos

Some more photos of Fort Jefferson and Dry Tortugas National Park

FortJefferson (62 photos)
12 August 2006

Note: To see the pictures in the original Picasa album, click here

Fort Jefferson and Dry Tortugas National Park

www.nps.gov/drto/

Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads….

You can’t drive to the Dry Tortugas National Park. You need a boat. Or a seaplane. Or really good swimming skills. It sits about 70 miles due West of Key West out in the middle of the ocean and holds the distinction of being the United States’ most remote national park.

I’d never even heard of this place until my second trip to Key West in August 2006, when we were looking for things to do one day. Back then it cost us about a hundred bucks per person for the ferry ride, which included bagles, danishes, and coffee on the boat in the morning, lunch out at the park, and a guided tour. At the time of this writing (2009) the prices have risen a bit to 145 dollars. Yikes. Thanks Dubbya. It’s worth it though, as this is one of those rare places on earth you absolutely cannot miss seeing before you go tits up, and you will not regret the adventure.

This is by far the coolest park I’ve been to in the United States. I’m a big huge fan of Civil War forts, and the Dry Tortugas National Park has the granddaddy of them all!

“The Slumbering Giant”

Giant is right. This fort is so big it boggles the mind. You really can’t get an idea of how huge it really is until you walk into the parade grounds and look around you – the inside area of the fort holds 13 acres of land.. It’s quite literally breathtaking.

The fort itself sits on Garden Key, but if you look at the aerial photos you realize that it’s more like the fort buts up to Garden Key, as 4 sides of it are exposed directly to the ocean. The fort is ringed by a seawall to help keep waves from deteriorating the exterior walls. The mote this creates is full of crazy, colorful little fish and is only a few feet deep.

In 1826 the federal government constructed a lighthouse on Garden Key with a caretaker’s house next to it. Three years after that, the government decided the island was a perfect place for a fort to help control piracy in the shipping lanes, and for the next 17 years they designed and planned, eventually beginning construction in 1846. The new fort surrounded the lighthouse and the house, and when the fort walls were finished, the old brick lighthouse was demolished replaced by a metal one atop the fort wall..

Like most things in Key West, the fort was never actually finished. This was due primarily to the advent of the rifled cannon, which made the fort obsolete.

In 1865 the fort was sent a very notable prisoner; Dr. Samual Mudd, who was being held for conspiracy in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Mudd acted as the forts’ doctor throughout the yellow fever epidemic at the fort in 1867, and because of his efforts, was eventually pardoned and released.

The fort and it’s surrounding waters were declared a national monument in 1935 by Franklin Roosevelt, and were designated as a national park in 1992.

Fort Jefferson is the largest masonry structure in the western hemisphere, and contains more than 16 million bricks!

I don’t want to try to repeat a lot of historical crap here, but if you’re interested you can get a better rundown of the vast history of Fort Jefferson at Wikipedia.

A La Plage!

There are three small beaches on Garden Key, one faces the shipping channel, so it’s pretty unhospitible, but the other two face the shallow waters surrounding the fort, and the snorkeling here is world-class. The waters around Fort Jefferson are filled with all manner of colorful sea life – there are even some american crocodiles out there – seriously!

The boat captain on our trip out told the passengers that when they were snorkeling, to stay away from the coral, the moray eels… and the sharks! Everyone looked at one another as if they were all thinking, eff that!  I’m not snorkeling now! He continued to tell us that if we left them alone they’d leave us alone, and that the ecosystem out in the Tortugas was so rich, that the larger predatory fish were never hungry, and generally had no reason to come after our tootsies. Great. It was so hot, everyone went in the water anyway - which by the way, is so clear you can easily see 30 to 40 feet.. absolutely beautiful!

Time flies when you’re having fun

I spent the better part of two hours wandering around in the fort taking photos while Christina and her Brother went swimming. I got a ton of really cool shots, but I tell you – I paid for it. It was August, and it was HOT out there. I did manage to jump in the water and cool off before it was time to leave though, what a relief!

I definitely want to go back and spend the day snorkeling around the seawall. Maybe even spend the night at the primitive campground there, now THAT would be an adventure. I can only imagine how cool it would be to camp on the beach on a tiny island in the middle of the Ocean – that will be a future post on Conch Tales for sure…

I highly recommend that if you find yourself in Key West, you take a day and visit this amazing place, you’ll be glad you did!

Check out more photos of Fort Jefferson.

Fort Zachary Taylor Photos

Some more Photos from Fort Zachary Taylor

FortZach (69 photos)
19 August 2009

Note: To see the pictures in the original Picasa album, click here

Fort Zachary Taylor State Park

(305) 292-6713 – www.fortzacharytaylor.com/home.html

Truly a hidden treasure

It’s a bit hard to find if you haven’t been there before. It’s buried inside the Truman Annex, which in itself kept us away for a while. There’s a guard booth at the public entrance to the Annex, and it’s not very clear that it’s fully open to the public. In reality you just drive on through right past the guard. Apparently there are some local political debates raging about that guard house and the possibility that the Navy may add a gate. I guess the City approved the Navy’s plan to add a gate with the proviso that it never be closed.. haha. True Key West compromise.

Anyways, once you pass the guard booth, you are in the Truman Annex proper, and there is a very cool neighborhood there which used to be navy housing, but was sold to the City a while back. It’s beautiful.. quaint little cottages and conch houses.. it reminds me of Seaside in the panhandle or even Celebration in Orlando. Definitely worth a detour on your bikes to ride around a bit in here.

Once you ride past the neighborhood, you come across the old Navy Port where they used to house Navy submarines. The docks were decommissioned in 1974 because the newer nuclear subs were too large to fit there, and now it’s a favorite place for locals to go watch the sunset.

If you veer to the left as you get to the docks, you come across an entrance to the Naval station there and another gate leading to Fort Zach Park. It costs $2.50 per person on a bicycle or walking, and $4.50 for the first person in a car, $7.50 for two in a car, and .50 cents per person after that. Definitely worth riding your bikes in… Christina bought us a yearly pass that lets us get up to 8 people in at a time. It cost her $80.00, it’s since gone up to $120.00, but even then, when you go as often as we do, it’s a well worth it.

You follow the road a bit farther and you’ll pass The actual Fort Zachary Taylor on the right, and come to a parking area.

The Best Beach on the Island

I love, love, love this beach. I was never fond of going the beach until I visited the Virgin Islands a few years ago and experienced what a real Caribbean beach was like. I have a friend who owns a house on Water Island, right next to St Thomas, and it was on his beach – Honeymoon Beach – that I re-connected with my fantasy of island living. It was like a slap in the face, I’d been doing it wrong my whole life!

Well Fort Zach Beach is as close to that Caribbean beach paradise on Water Island as I’ve found in Florida. It’s rarely if ever anything close to crowded, the water is blue and crystal clear, there are tons of beautiful colorful fish swimming around, and the waves are minimal. The beach is rocky near the water, so you’ll probably want to wear water shoes if your feetsies are tender. There are picnic tables and BBQ grills peppered through the australian pines and palm trees running the length of the beach. The grills are clean and rust-free, and the picnic tables are in good repair.

There’s a pavilion on the beach that serves up sandwiches, ice cream, and even beer as long as you keep it on the deck area. I was surprised to find beer on the menu there as it’s a state park, and well you know.. they frown on you bringing booze in. (Not that I ever let that stop me). I haven’t had any of the food from there, so I cant comment on the quality yet, but when I do, I’ll come back and update this post.

Fort Zach Beach is on the south-westernmost tip of the island, so it’s kind of cool because you are right at the point where the Atlantic merges with the Gulf of Mexico. Around the west point, the gulf-side of the beach is lined with large boulders so you definitely won’t want to try to swim there. It’s a super-great place to watch the sunset and boat traffic. The cruise ships go right past here too, so that’s pretty neat.. they are so big it boggles the mind.

The entire park surrounds the fort, but it wasn’t always that way. The fort used to be jutting out into the ocean, but when the Navy dug the shipping channel and submarine port, the dirt was used to build the land that the park now sits on. So Fort Zach Beach is entirely man-made. Crazy.

If you go north-east up the coast a little from the point here, you’ll run into “Truman Beach”, it’s a tiny little stretch of sand abutting the sea wall for the Naval Port you passed coming into the park. The secret service had this small beach built for Henry Truman so he could enjoy the beach out of the way of the public eye. He visited it once, but returned to the public beach on the other side of the point, stating that he liked the public beach better. I’m not sure if it’s frowned upon to visit this little stretch or not, I’ve seen a couple folks hanging out there, but who knows.. I’ll have to try it myself some time.

This beach and park is so very cool, that I couldn’t see ever visiting the public beaches in Key West, I guess I should be happy that it seems not very many tourists know about it, either that or that they aren’t willing to pay to get onto a beach. I like it just the way it is, uncrowded, clean, and supremely relaxing.

I think I’ll go there now…