Notes for an upcoming trip

Fort Zachary Taylor was strategically placed to protect the harbor at Key West. It would also serve as the administrative headquarters for the US Navy’s East Gulf Coast Blockading Squadron. The fort’s construction began in 1845 and but would not be completed for another 21 years after delays caused by shortages of materials and yellow fever outbreaks. The plans were drawn up by two members of the Army Corps of Engineers Simon Bernard and Joseph G. Totten. Fort Taylor was originally built 1000 feet offshore on a 63-acre shoal and connected to the mainland by a causeway using slave labor. It included two levels of casemates, topped with a terreplein where multiple canons were placed. The three seaward defensive walls were each 495 feet long, between which bulwarks containing 42 guns each, spread over three levels. It was trapezoid in shape with walls that were 5 feet thick and was originally three stories tall. By the end of the war it was armed with approximately 140 cannons of varying sizes. The 10-inch Rodman and Columbiad cannons at the fort had a range of three miles. Eight hundred men could sleep in the fort’s barracks.

The two top stories were removed during the Spanish American war and the original casemates filled with sand. Further remodeling also included the addition of Battery Osceola and Battery Adair inside of the fortress. In the 1960s the US Navy deposited dredging fill to connect the fort to the mainland. In 1968, excavations inside the fort unearthed many original armaments from the fort including numerous cannons, gun cradles, carriages, a desalinization plant, and more than 1,000 cannonballs and projectiles. Fort Taylor is considered to have the largest collection of Civil War armaments in the United States. The two images below are what the fort looked like at the time of the war.