Hardts On The Highway: Fort Zachary Taylor Historic State Park

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Fort Zachary Taylor Historic State Park

We drove down the rest of the way to Key West in Toad this morning. I had some letters to mail and knew that the post office would not be open on Monday due to MLK holiday. After stopping at McDonalds for breakfast, we drove out to Fort Taylor, America's southernmost fortress. I was surprised to learn that this fort -- in the very deepest south -- remained in Union hands all during the Civil War. It was literally built at the end of the Keys -- with fill that made its own island!

Like many other decommissioned forts, this one has been inactive since 1947 --

At one time the Fort looked like this, only there were two more stories on top. The three stories of gun batteries held over 140 cannon. When rifled guns made cannons obsolete, the top two stores were removed.

Each of the cannons were housed in one of these bays and shot through the opening in the wall. Note the vaulted ceilings and arches, built by skilled Irish and German immigrant labor.

Now these are the inhabitants of these abandoned walls --

As we peered down the gun opening of the fort wall, we could see at least three more iguanas basking in the sun --

They are certainly strange looking creatures -- and big!

When we climbed on top of the wall of the Fort, we could look out to the Key West harbor where this huge cruise ship was in port and loading passengers.

We could also look down into the batteries built after the top two stories of the fort were removed and see some of the obsolete 140 cannons that were used as fill in the walls of the new batteries... (These have been coated with paint for protection against the elements and further deterioration.)

The concrete for the new batteries was made with salt water. Now the salt is leaching out and the walls are very unstable --

This is the entrance to one of the forty cisterns that were built with the idea that rain water could be saved and used as the fort's fresh water source. Unfortunately, after two years of drought, the sea seeped into the cisterns, ruining them. Fort Taylor then had the nation's first desalination plant that produced about 7000 gallons of water per day.

This is another good idea that didn't work. Latrines were built that dropped wastes into the ocean with the idea that the tides would keep them flushed out. But, the tide in the Keys does not fluctuate enough, so it didn't do its job. Dysentery and Yellow Fever ran rampant and caused most of the deaths recorded at the Fort.

As we looked down into the portion of the moat left, we could see this tree with its resident Snowy Egret and an iguana that is just as big -- it's over four feet long!