Coral Castle - Homestead Florida

On the way back up to the Airport from the Keys, we took a slight deviation (and it literally was a 10minute deviation off the road) to the Coral Castle.

Ed was a Latvian that moved to the USA after he was jilted by his sweet sixteen, eventually settling in Flordia City, since he had apparently contracted tuberculosis.  After working for a while, he bought himself a property, and started carving things out of "Coral" (actually it's oolite limestone, which is a sedimentary rock - I'll let Mum give a geology lesson in the comments!).  He was very secretive, and didn't let anyone watch him work, but claimed that he had learnt the secrets of building pyramids.

He charged 10c to enter into his "castle", and eventually he had to up and move, and chose to move down to Homestead.  He took a number of pieces with him, and you can tell the difference between the stones from Florida City and Homestead, due to the way the rock is formed.  The Florida City rock is in layers, while the Homestead Rock has a more popcorn texture to it.

He lived a very frugal life, and although he never let you pay to enter more than once, locals often brought him food, since they thought he was too thin.  He made his tools out of carparts (Model T parts in fact), and didn't have any electricity hooked up in his castle.  He continued working on his sculptures until he was 80, before closing up the castle with a sign saying "gone to the hospital".  After his death in the 1950s, they found $3500 in cash up in is bedroom. 

Although most of us would never had heard of the place, it's apparently been the subject of television shows, and inspired Billy Idol's "Sweet Sixteen".  He also filmed the filmclip there...

Apparently the place has "mystical properties", but I just found it kinda sweet, but wierd.  You can read more about the place here....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_Castle

 

 Ed lived in the room to the right.

 

 

 

 

 

 These three are his well and his refridgeration - dug straight down into the rock.  He apparently used the fork-stick method to find the spring.

 His bath to the right - he actually used this, filled it up in the morning, and by the evening it would be warm enough to bathe in.
 

 This one below says "Made 1928, Moved 1939, Born 1887 Latvia  EL"

 This is his oven, made out of Ford parts.  had bellows and all.

 

 

The stairs up to his room.  his bed was essentially a plank of wood.