Yankee Freedom- Dry Tortugas National Park Museum, Key West

About Yankee Freedom- Dry Tortugas National Park Museum

The Dry Tortugas Museum is a free interpretive center in Building One at Mallory Square that explores nearly two centuries of Fort Jefferson history before visitors travel seventy miles offshore to see the actual fort. The museum's centerpiece is an intricate eleven-foot-scale model of Fort Jefferson and Garden Key, depicting the fort as it appeared around 1870 in the post-Civil War period. The model includes "ghost" structures representing buildings that no longer exist, showing the fort's deterioration over time. Period-accurate scale figures portray scenes from daily life of soldiers, prisoners, and workers at the fort. A five-minute audiovisual presentation highlights the architectural aspects of Civil War-era fortifications and describes the hardships of living in such a remote location. A photo mural traces the fort's history. The museum helps visitors understand what to expect when they board a boat for the journey to Dry Tortugas National Park, located in Key West, Florida.