Transcripts For CSPAN3 Fort Zachary Taylor State Park 202406

Transcripts For CSPAN3 Fort Zachary Taylor State Park 20240622

Money in cuba. I think the San Carlos Institute can play a pivotal role in bringing the cuban people together. And thats why i have dedicated 30 years of my life to this cause. Not to restore, bring back to life a building or to establish a multipurpose facility that serves as a museum, as a library, as an educational center, as a theater, as a Community Center that san carlos has become a Cultural Center for key west but the real purpose for this effort has been for san carlos to serve as a place that helps put into action the principles and the allies for which it was founded in 1871. Those allies of human rights and Human Dignity for the human people. Yeah. Welcome to fort Zachary Taylor historic state park. Its a fort that goes back to 1845. Thats when they started building it. It continued to be constructed until 1866. A lot of this fort actually was response to what happened in the war of 1812. The british canon were able to pretty successfully ravage many of the american forts with the exsense of the masonry forts. Thats why they decided to build this. They would eventually build some 46 forts running from maine to luciana. By the time they found their way all the way down here was 1845. There was actually one of the largest masonry forts of its kind. At the time in the 1840s this was stateoftheart. This was the best thing that we had to offer after after some of the disasters that occurred in the war of 1812. So at one time we were a true fortress surrounded by water. On this side of the fort, there was no beach no parking lot, that was the atlantic other side at the north curtain down there, we had the gulf. All we have now that symbolizes that is a mote. There is a moat there that the park service put in. Civil war was the was its heyday. This was january 16th ten days after florida became the third state to leave the union. When this fort was officially taken over by the union, captain bran than name in with 40 of the union troops turned it over, turned some of the cannon toward key west just to let them know this was a union fort. Everything was a union fort before the civil war. Or put it another way, it was an american fort. The south really didnt build forts. They occupied them. But theres three that never left union hands. This is one of them taylor, ft. Jefferson and forepickt. Pickens. He went in with no instructions, took it over and not quite a month later the letter came from washington. He was concerned when opening this letter as to whether or not he still had a job. They were giving him the instruction to take over the fort, which he had already done. The troops coming here, this was a training facility. You got the young troops here, mostly rural people from up north. And it was kind of unusual. Here you got the burly sergeants from the mexican war yelling out hey foot straw foot. Because they were dealing with bake cli illiterate young troops that didnt know their left from their right. They would tie a straw to the different shoes there to help them remember their left from their right. Imagine that. Here they are away from home for the first time for any length of time in a strange area. And gn this was more than simply a military experience. They had the deal with in the summer months the death. But sometimes they would come down with the yellow fever. That was the major killer here. It wasnt cannon balls. It was yellow fever. Smooth bore was the primary big nafl gun that they used in those days. 148 of the most modern naval cannon. Thats what they had here at the time. Never a cannon ball fired in anger from old ft. Zach. Some 40 years later we had the spanishamerican war and that kind of changed things. The guns were changed to more modern guns that fired at a greater velocity. And there was a major reconstruction that occurred in here though, that more or less took, well ft. Taylor out of the conflict. They decided to lower the profile of the fort make it lez of a target. This was in response to the rifle cannon that were making the masonry forts suddenly vulnerable. They dynamited the top two levels of the fort. A lot of the debris from the dynamite they used to build these batteries, including the cannon. The smooth bore cannon, you can see evidence of that civil war cannon. Some of it is protruding out of the cement. In 1947, after 102 years the army turned this over to the navy. 1845, 1847, the army turned it over to the navy. And the navy i dont want to say they turned it into a dump wul all of the surplus material was dumped here and covered it up and it disappeared into the dust pan of history. People forgot it was here. They did exka ration in the 1960s, a gentleman, howard ranger, hes passed on but hes one we all look to as almost single handedly helped

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