Coral Castle

WHAT IT IS

1,100 tons of coral rock, quarried and stacked by one very small man who would not say how.

Edward Leedskalnin was five feet tall, weighed about a hundred pounds, and spent 1923 to 1951 cutting and lifting oolitic limestone blocks heavier than the stones at Stonehenge, working alone, mostly at night, with homemade tools. He said he understood the secrets of the pyramids. He also said he built it for a sixteen-year-old fiancée who left him in Latvia, which is the part the gift shop leads with. A nine-ton gate still swings on a fingertip. Engineers keep showing up and leaving unsatisfied.

HOW IT SCORES

NEARBY