Tortugas

[L Verge]

(03-07-2019 02:42 AM)Steve Wrote:  Dave here's a link to a 1993 National Park Service "Submerged Cultural Resources Assessment" with things that might be of interest in checking out if you plan to camp and kayak between the keys:

https://archive.org/details/drytortugasn...rr/page/n7

Here's a link to a chronology of the uses of Bird Key and Hospital Key from the report:

https://archive.org/details/drytortugasn...r/page/138


Also, the Secretary of War ordered all the remaining/surviving bodies on Bird Key to be moved to the Pensacola military in 1877:

https://books.google.com/books?id=WpgFAA...la&f=false

Loved seeing references to my friend Ed Bearss in these reports that he compiled back in the 1980s. He is one of the most brilliant military historians that God ever created and retired about 20 years ago as the Chief Historian for the National Park Service. Ed is now in his mid-90s and still travels the world conducting tours of WWII sites and here in the U.S. (chiefly Civil War).

Many years ago, he was given two weeks notice to conduct a tour over the Booth escape route for the Smithsonian. The Surratt Society had been doing the tours, but a conflict of interest occurred, and we were dropped. Let's just say that I filled in a few gaps in his narrative for him since he inherited the job with so little notice.
He still does at least one tour a year for the Smithsonian, and when he gets to Surratt House, he comes into my office and usually says, "So, fill me in on what's new in the assassination field."

He's a native of Montana, I believe. Those cruel winters must create very hardy folks.