Dry Tortugas National Park — The Complete Guide is an independent website dedicated to exploring all aspects of the park, its human history, its natural history. It is not affiliated with the National Park Service or any commercial vendors.

The park is an extraordinary place. It is home to Fort Jefferson, the largest all masonary fort ever built in the United States. The fort hasbeen a prison, holding among others conspirators to the assasination of Abraham Lincoln, the most famous of which was Dr. Samuel Mudd. It's been a bastion, called the Gibralter of the Gulf for its role in protecting America's shipping lanes. Its seven islands are refuges for migrating birds, and it's home to the only nesting colony of magnificent frigatebirds in the U.S. Lying 70 miles west of Key West, it's the most remote of our national parks, and because of that, among the least visited.

We've built this website using photographs and experiences from our visit to the park, park documents, newspaper accounts and other records. Our intent is to make the site as comprehensive as possible, covering the Dry Tortugas from every conceivable angle. It's a task we might not succeed in fully completing, but then Fort Jefferson was never fully finished despite three decades of work. Still, we hope readers will find our efforts and this website useful in understanding and appreciating the Dry Tortugas.