Monday, January 10, 2011

Coral Castle

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A few months ago I visited the Coral Castle while down in South Florida. It's a really interesting place where a large structure was constructed using locally quarried rock, supposedly by a single man. The short version of the story goes that a man named Edward Leedskalnin was set to get married. He ended up being ditched, and moved to Florida to build a stone tribute to win back his long lost love.

Multiply that admission price by 100 to get closer to the current admission.
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The most recognizable scene from Coral Castle are these giant carvings of various astronomical bodies (or astrological, depending on what the tour guide says).
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Edward Leedskalnin must have had a thing for astronomy with his moons and planets. He also built what is now being called a telescope. If I remember correctly, it points to Polaris.
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And a working sundial. It was just after 3 when I took the picture.
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The original name of the Coral Castle was Rock Gate Park. This is the namesake rock gate. The large rock was originally so perfectly balanced on it's pivot that it could easily be spun. Eventually it stopped working and the group of civil engineers that came to fix the gate were 'baffled' at it's workings and weren't able to get it to it's previous condition.
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There was a well which also served as a refrigerator.
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An oven out of car parts.
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