10 Facts About Dry Tortugas

Dry Tortugas National Park is a national park located about 68 miles west of Key West in the Gulf of Mexico.

Dry Tortugas is unique in its combination of a largely undisturbed tropical ecosystem with significant historic artifacts.

Dry Tortugas is a small archipelago of coral islands about 70 miles west of Key West, Florida.

The Dry Tortugas Atoll has had up to 11 islets during the past two centuries.

Dry Tortugas are the western extension of an arcuate chain of Pleistocene reef and oolitic limestone islands, with the eastern limit in the vicinity of Miami.

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Additionally, excellent examples of Holocene carbonate-sand deposits are found in the Dry Tortugas, consisting mainly of disarticulated Halimeda plates.

The Dry Tortugas were seen as a strategic point for the control of the Straits of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.

Dry Tortugas is managed by the staff of Everglades National Park.

The park was established to protect the island and marine ecosystems of the Dry Tortugas, to preserve Fort Jefferson and submerged cultural resources such as shipwrecks, and to allow for public access in a regulated manner.

Dry Tortugas archipelago is classified as a borderline subtropical—tropical ecosystem, hosting species that do not normally breed in, and are not commonly found anywhere else within, the continental United States or the islands and waters surrounding it.