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Dry Tortugas National Park
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A clustor of seven tiny, uninhabited coral reef islands located about 70 miles west of Key West, in the Gulf of Mexico. These islands are the crowded home to thousands of nesting and migrating sea birds. President Theodore Roosevelt declared the area a wildlife refuge in 1908 to protect the birds. In 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt upgraded it to national monument status. Finally Congress awarded national park status in 1992. The most prominent feature on the islands is Fort Jefferson, started in 1846 as a chain of seacoast defenses it was never really finished and never was battle. It served as a federal military prison during and after the US Civil War. Its most famous prisoner was Dr. Samuel Mudd, the physician who set the broken leg of President Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth. He spent four years here, but his work on behalf of victims of a yellow fever epidemic earned him a reduction of his life sentence.
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Location:
PO Box 279, Homestead Florida 33030
Telephone
305-242-7800
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