Almost 70 miles (112.9 km) west of Key West lies a cluster of seven islands composed of coral reefs and sand. Along with the surrounding shoals and waters, they make up Dry Tortugas National Park. The area is known for its famous bird and marine life, its legends of pirates and sunken gold, and its military past.
Historic Fort Jefferson, the largest all-masonry fort in the United States, was built on the second largest island in the Dry Tortugas, Garden Key, between 1846 and 1875 to protect the nation’s gateway to the Gulf of Mexico.
The audio-described tour is available in the National Park Service’s NPS app which contains tools to explore more than 400 national parks nationwide, complete with interactive maps, tours of park places, on-the-ground accessibility information, and much more to plan your national park adventures before and during your trip.
Contact us to explore Parks Audio Description for your next project.
Here are a few samples of the narratives we wrote for this project:
Officer’s Quarters
Housing at the fort was to be provided in the Soldiers barracks and Officers’ Quarters. Today only the foundations of these three-story structures remain standing in front of you, and some portions may be overgrown with tall grasses and trees. The brick ruins located closest to the walking path are all that remain of several two-story kitchens.
Hot Shot Furnace
About 100 feet along the path to the right toward the next bastion is a narrow, 10-foot wide trapezoidal-shaped brick building sloping up and away from the path. This is the Hot Shot Furnace, where soldiers would heat cannon balls until they were cherry red. The heated cannon ball would skip across the surface of the water like a stone, striking a ship near the waterline to effect the maximum amount of damage.
Archways
There are three distinct levels to the fort. Fifteen feet above the moat, a series of six-foot square arched openings, known as embrasures, penetrate the wall of the fort all along its side wall at 20 foot intervals. Fifteen feet above each of those openings, a series of larger 12-foot square unfinished embrasures line the side wall of the fort. Moving 15 feet higher, the bricks change color from brown to red for the remainder of the fort’s height. At the top of the third tier, a series of rounded brick archways jut out six feet from the top of the wall, ringing the entire fort.
Bastion & Curtain Wall
The brick walls here jut out 30 feet into the moat, forming what is called a bastion. Fort Jefferson has six of these defensive structures, one at each of its corners. As along the walls of the fort, embrasures line the side walls of each bastion, facing down the length of the moat on either side. There is a single embrasure on the second and third levels on the outer face of these bastions. The rounded brick archways jutting out from the top of the fort line the top of the third tier of all the bastions as well.
Contact us to explore Parks Audio Description for your next project.