Meet Ed. He Built A Castle.

Today, you will meet Ed. Sort of. Ed is dead you see. Here is what Ed looked like.

Ed was all of 5 feet tall, and weighed in at a hefty 100 pounds. He was not a very big man. When he was 26 and living in his native Latvia, he was engaged to marry a 16 year old chick. He would call her his "sweet 16". Ed was a little bit creepy. On the night before the wedding, Ed's Sweet 16 left him. Ed never recovered from this. He left Latvia, and somehow ended up in Homestead Florida. It was in Homestead that he build his Sweet 16 a castle, out of solid coral rock. She never came to see the castle built for her, but she was aware of Ed's creation.

Ed was a strange man. Nobody is documented as seeing him build anything. He worked at night, under kerosene lamp light. He was a very private man, but he would give curious neighbors and passers by tours of his castle.

Eds castle is made entirely of coral rock, and things he built out of truck parts that were scavanged from junkyards. Nobody knows exactly how he did what he did. All Ed would ever tell people was that he understood the principles of leverage and balance very well. but we do know that he moved large chunks of coral rock, weighing 10 to 15 tons, without any help. The only tools we know he used were primitive home made tools fashioned from old truck parts.

This is Ed's bed. It is a metal platform hanging from the roof. The sacks seen in the photo are not original, but supposedly very close to what he actually used as sheets. The bed is located on the second floor of a tower, made from solid coral rock. There are hand carved stairs leading up to the room.

This is Ed's chair. It is made from Ford Model T parts. It also hangs from the roof.

This is Ed's kitchen. He cooked on that rusty kerosene stove thing. The box hanging above the stove is a cabinet for pots and pans and stuff.

Under his room, Ed had a workshop. In his workshop he would fiddle with gizmos that he built. He was a radio experimenter, and very interested in electromagnatisim.

This is a photo of Ed's generator. It was operated by a hand crank. Ed also experimented with radio.

These are coils. They were probably used as antennas. They might also have been some sort of inductors or something. Who knows. But whatever they are, I am fairly positive that when Ed built them, they worked for whatever he used them for. Ed was strange, but not dumb.

This is part of a block and tackle that Ed built. Yea, a pulley is just a simple machine - but how many have pulleys have you made from old truck parts? How many 10 ton rocks have you moved using pulleys you made from old truck parts?

Ed's castle was built in two locations. The original location was further south than where the Coral Castle sits today. Ed moved the 1/2 built castle, rock slab at a time, to where it all sits today. Why did he move the castle? People moved in next door. Ed did not want neighbors. We do know how Ed moved the blocks. He modified a flatbed truck that did not run. He took railroad rails, and attached them to the flatbed. Under the cover of darkness, he would load a block or two on the truck. In the morning, a friend of his would arrive with a tractor and tow the truck to the current location of Coral Castle. Then Ed would unload the truck, which was really more like a trailer. Then it would be towed back to the old location for another load.

This is where Ed mined some of the rocks used to create his castle. Notice how smooth the sides of the rock pit are. In case you can not tell by the photo, the walls are smooth. Trust me. This pit was left as it was, the others were filled in with dirt. To cut the walls, Ed used a gas powered saw. Then he used sharpened truck leaf springs, which he wedged under the blocks, to break them loose from the floor of the rock pit. Then he would lift the blocks, carve the blocks, and place the blocks all using primitive hand tools. By himself.

This is another of Ed's chairs. It is made from a solid block of stone. It is actually comfortable, for a chair made of stone. Ed would use the chair to read in. He built a few of them, so depending on the time of day he could sit in a chair that kept the sun to his back. He never built a roof for his castle. Only his sleeping quarters and workshop were covered.

This is Ed's Florida Table. It is carved in the shape of the State Of Florida. Ed thought that the table could be used by the Governor in the state capitol. It never was. The table is still exactly where Ed carved it. It could not be moved today, without the use of a crane and a big ass flatbed truck. But in the 1940s or 50s, Ed moved it as a solid block - without a crane. Then he carved it to the shape you see in the photo.

This ends part 1 of the Coral Castle tour. I have 10 more photos, but adding them to this post will be too much. I will put up the other photos later. Maybe tomorrow after work, or at the very latest on my next day off (Wednesday). My days off are split this week because I traded my Thursday off.

For more information about Ed and his castle, return to this blog to see more pictures. Or better yet, google Coral Castle.