The Dry Tortugas

Facts about Dry Tortugas National Park: seventy miles west of Key West; the cluster of islands was discovered by Ponce de Leon in 1513; named the Tortugas, the Spanish word for sea turtles (the adjective “dry” was tacked on later to alert sailors they would drink no fresh water here); Fort Jefferson, named after Thomas Jefferson, was established to protect the shipping lanes to the Gulf of Mexico; it was constructed between 1846 and 1874, when it was abandoned by the United States Army; the fort was never finished, though it was reoccupied by the navy in 1898 thanks to the Spanish-American War; it’s ninety miles north of Cuba; in 1861, it became a federal prison; in 1865, the four conspirators convicted of plotting Lincoln’s murder who were not hung in Washington were exiled here; three of them - Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, Samuel Arnold, and Ned Spangler - would receive presidential pardons on the last day of Andrew Johnson’s administration; the fourth, Michael O’Laughlin, died here during the yellow fever epidemic of 1867; in its heyday, around two thousand people lived here, including a few women and children - mostly officers’ families, not to mention the odd laundress (because as punishment imprisoned men were hung up by their thumbs, but apparently a girl job like washing socks was considered cruel and unusual and left to the female hired help); the fort consists of sixteen million bricks shipped at great cost from as far away as Maine; designated by President Franklin Roosevelt a national monument in 1935, the Dry Tortugas became a national park in 1992, offering historical tours, bird-watching, shark research, and snorkeling around its reefs.

Assassination Vacation, Sarah Vowell

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