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Garden Key Light

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Garden Key Light

Garden Key Light at sunset
Location	Fort Jefferson, Dry Tortugas
Coordinates	24°37′41″N 82°52′20″WCoordinates: 24°37′41″N 82°52′20″W
Year first lit	1826
Automated	1912
Deactivated	1924
Foundation	a stairwell in Fort Jefferson
Construction	boilerplate iron
Tower shape	hexagonal
Height	70 feet (21 m)
Original lens	1st order Fresnel lens

The Garden Key Light, also known as the Tortuga Harbor Light, is located at Fort Jefferson, on Garden Key in the Dry Tortugas, Florida. The first lighthouse, started in 1824 and first lit in 1826, was a brick conical tower. The lighthouse and its outbuildings were the only structures on Garden Key until construction started on Fort Jefferson in 1846. Construction continued until 1861, but the fort was never completed.

In 1858 the Dry Tortugas lighthouse was built on a nearby island, and the first order Fresnel lens was moved there from the Garden Key lighthouse. The Garden Key lighthouse received a fourth order Fresnel lens, and became the harbor light for Fort Jefferson. In 1877 the brick tower was razed and replaced with a boilerplate iron tower on top of a stairwell in the fort. In 1912, the keeper's house burned down, and the lighthouse was automated with tanks of compressed acetylene replacing thebutts of kerosene to fuel the lights. The light was deactivated in 1924.

The old brick tower standing beside Fort Jefferson before the tower was torn down in 1877.

The USS Maine was part of the squadron stationed at Garden Key when it exploded and sank in the harbor of Havana, Cuba.James Fenimore Cooper's 1848 novel Jack Tier: or the Florida Reefs, is set at the Garden Key lighthouse. Ernest Hemingway's 1932 short story "After the Storm" is about a shipwreck between Garden Key and Rebecca Shoal, to the east of Garden Key.

References[edit]

• "Historic Light Station Information and Photography: Florida". United States Coast Guard Historian's Office. Retrieved June 29,2008.
• McCarthy, Keven M. 1990. Florida Lighthouses. University of Florida Press. Gainesville, Florida.

External links[edit]

• National Park Service Dry Tortugas National Park