The sun peeks out for the last time from a low cloud bank, standing on the extreme southern end of Key West, looking out to the gulf.
The empty gunrooms of Fort Jefferson look out over the moat to the sea, as the structure that was obsolete before it was even finished lies abandoned 2 and a half hours away by boat from Key West.
A view through the lower archways on one side of Fort Jefferson gives an idea of the millions of bricks that had to be hauled by ship 70 miles west from Key West out into the Gulf of Mexico to build the fort. Even though it was never finished, the fort is the largest masonry structure in the Americas, being composed of over 16 million bricks. Years of water filtering through cracks in the 2nd floor ceiling of the abandoned structure have begun to form a couple of 'stalagmite' type formations on the floor of the hall.
