A national park in Florida announced the discovery of a 19th century quarantine hospital and cemetery that sank beneath the waves due to storm events and changing conditions around the Florida Keys.
Archaeologists at Dry Tortugas National Park located the remains of what was once a late 19th-century quarantine hospital for yellow fever patients on a submerged island near Garden Key, according to a May 1 press release from the National Park Service (NPS). The park, which lies 70 miles west off Key West, is comprised of seven small islands encompassing 100 square miles of mostly open water. Access to the park is only available via boat or seaplane, but it was once home to Fort Jefferson, a never-finished fortification built to help protect America’s coastline in the mid-19th century.
Check out this cool find! National Park archeologists found the remains of a hospital and cemetery underwater at Dry Tortugas National Park.
NPS Photos C. Sproul
Images courtesy of National Park Service pic.twitter.com/GjVxpmfv6V
— Dry Tortugas National Park (@DryTortugasNPS) May 1, 2023
While Fort Jefferson served as a naval outpost, safe harbor and lighthouse, it gained notoriety as a military prison during the American Civil War. As the population in and around the fort grew, communicable diseases — such as yellow fever — overwhelmed the inhabitants, killing dozens of people throughout the 1860s and 1870s, according to the press release. (RELATED: Memorial Day That Honors Those Who Died In All American Wars Has Its Roots In Our Most Lethal Conflict)
To help stem the effects of deadly disease, several nearby islands were established with facilities used as quarantine hospitals in the 1860s. Although these hospitals fell into obscurity after the fort was abandoned in 1873, the U.S. Marine Hospital used Fort Jefferson as a base of operations between 1890 and 1900, which prompted the construction of an “isolation hospital” on one of the keys.
A survey conducted in August 2022 led members of the National Park’s Submerged Resources Center, the Southeast Archeological Center and a University of Miami graduate student to find not only the submerged remains of this isolation hospital but also a cemetery identified as the Fort Jefferson Post Cemetery, according to the press release. Though only one grave has been identified (that of a laborer named John Greer), historical records suggests that dozens of people may have been buried there.
While the cause of Greer’s death remains unknown, his large gravestone indicates he died at the fort Nov. 5, 1861, the release continued.
“This intriguing find highlights the potential for untold stories in Dry Tortugas National Park, both above and below the water,” project director and maritime archeologist Josh Marano said in the announcement. “Although much of the history of Fort Jefferson focuses on the fortification itself and some of its infamous prisoners, we are actively working to tell the stories of the enslaved people, women, children and civilian laborers.”