 | 1857 The walls at Fort Jefferson started to crack as the main wall
reached
a height of 15 feet.
|
| 1858 As the main wall reached a height of 20 feet the first tier of
the Fort
was almost complete.
|
| 1860 The main wall reached 35 feet. It's final height of 45 feet
was done 1862.
The construction done by the Army continued thru 1875. Fort Jefferson was
never fully completed.
|
| 1861 The first prisoners started arriving at Fort Jefferson.
|
| 1862 Test done at Fort Pulaski Georgia showed that the new rifled
cannons now
being put into service are able to breach an eight foot thick wall in 9 hours.
This made all masonry Forts obsolete.
|
| 1863 Work continued during the Civil War. The barracks and officers
quarters
were finished with most of the work now being done by prison labor.
|
| 1864 The number of prisoners grew to about 800. President Lincoln
commuted
the death penalties for deserters to imprisonment at Fort Jefferson. These men
most from the Union Army work in the construction battalion.
|
| 1865 Doctor Samuel Mudd, Edward Spangler, Michael O'Laughin and
Samuel Arnold
arrived at the Fort. All convicted Lincoln Conspirators. Mudd being the most
noted
for setting the leg of John Booth after he broke it jumping from the balcony
after
shooting President Lincoln.
|
| 1867 Yellow Fever hits Fort Jefferson. Of the 400 people at the
fort 270 got the
fever. The Surgeon at the Fort and all four of the nurses at the hospital
died.
Dr. Samuel Mudd and Dr. Daniel Whitehurst returning from
Key West fought and
lived the battle against the fever. Mudd's action during this time of crisis
help
lead to his pardon in 1869.
|
| 1870 The construction continues with prison labor. The old guns
replaced by the
new rifled guns, plus big 15 inch Rodmans.
|
| 1873 With the finishing of the moat wall the moat's final depth was
reach.
Another outbreak of Yellow Fever hits the Fort.
|
| 1875 The Army construction came to an end at Fort Jefferson.
|
| 1882 The Fort became part of the Navy program.
|
| 1888 Loggerhead, Bird and Garden Keys were set up as a new national
quarantine
station. It handled it's first case of smallpox in 1889.
Clyde's Key West Parks
|
