The Man Behind Florida’s Mysterious Coral Castle

Posted by Mike Richard on March 12, 2008
Filed under: Florida, Sidelines

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A Latvian man built a castle. By himself.

Coral Castle Entrance
© CoralCastle.com

It was meant as a monument to his lost love, his ‘Sweet Sixteen.’ Lovelorn in his native Latvia, Edward Leedskalnin fled for Florida, where he spent the next thirty years, building. He worked for most of every day, subsisting mostly on sardines and crackers. In his spare time, he studied magnetic currents.

Astronomical motifs - crescent moons, planets, etc. - festoon the grounds. The ‘Coral Castle’ has heart-shaped tables, multi-ton rocking chairs, and ramparts several feet thick. And one of the main doors - weighing several tons - is so perfectly balanced that it opens with the push of a finger.

Coral Castle’s 9 Ton Gate
© CoralCastle.com

No one ever saw Ed at work. Engineers, let alone the lay public, are a mite confused about how a five feet man lugged over a thousand tons of coral. When asked, he simply said he knew the principles of leverage pretty well. And as for carving it? Coral has been known to break the tools of jewelers.

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This article was reprinted with permission of Cool Things In Random Places - a little refreshing randomness from around the globe.



Vagabondish editor, Mike Richard, lives in Rhode Island - a spit of land in the northeastern U.S. He is a professional web designer and travel junkie with an unhealthy addiction to backpacking, camping, hiking and seeing the world. He enjoys knit hats, small, declarative sentences and speaking in the third person.



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[…] Castle’s walls surround a courtyard speckled with engineering puzzles. He somehow carved a gate out of a 9-ton block and balanced it so perfectly anyone can open it with the push of a […]