Interestingly, the Coral Castle in South Florida was built single-handedly by a tiny Latvian man, and it remains one of North America’s biggest mysteries. The builder was Ed Leedskalnin, who was only 5 feet tall (1.5 meters) and weighed a mere 100 pounds 45 kg.
Ed Leedskalnin was born in 1887, and at the age of 26, he was engaged to marry a 16-year Coral Castle old Latvian girl named Agnes Scuffs. The day before the wedding, young Agnes Scuffs decided to cancel because she thought Ed was too old, or maybe she was in love with someone else. It was a life changing decision for Ed.
He was extremely heartbroken and alone; he thought his life had ended, but instead, Ed Leedskalnin left his beloved Latvia for the United States, always thinking of Agnes as his “Sweet Sixteen.” The heartbroken man suffered so many hurdles in the United States. With only a 4th-grade education, he drifted from job to job until he came down with tuberculosis and moved to Florida for its more favorable climate.
During his travels, he became interested in science, astronomy, and Egyptian history, spending most of his time reading books on compelling currents and cosmic forces. Ed Leedskalnin was a prudent man, collecting old mechanical pieces and saving money any way he could. Eventually, he purchased a 10-acre 4 ha plot of land in Homestead, Florida, and set about excavating, carving, and moving many tons of coral rock all by himself.
Therefore, his monument would be devoted to his lost love, his Sweet Sixteen. Using only simple tools, a slight immigrant from Latvia single-handedly moved over 1,100 tons (997,700 kg) of coral blocks and constructed an engineering marvel called the Coral Castle.
Ed Leedskalnin poses in front of one of his massive carved stones.
Ed’s coral carvings are symbolic of everything that mattered to him: love, astronomy, nationalism, family, and magnetism. He created huge block walls surrounding a courtyard of themed tables and other whimsical stone attractions. Many people witnessed Ed Leedskalnin hauling his original sculptures from Florida City to Homestead, but no one ever saw how he loaded or unloaded the trailer.
He refused to allow visitors while he worked and had a kind of sixth sense which alerted him when someone was coming to spy. Ed Leedskalnin was a very private man who did much of his work entirely alone in the dark of night. For 28 years, with only crude winches, block tackles, and iron wedges, Ed Leedskalnin labored tirelessly on his monument. He cut coral from a quarry in front of the castle and moved enormous stones by lantern light.
The Obelisk stone weighs 28.5 tons (25,850 kg / 57,000 pounds) and is taller than the Great Upright stone at Stonehenge, positioned single-handedly into place by Ed Leedskalnin. The Tower consists of 243 tons, 220,400 kg of coral rock, with each block weighing four to nine tons, 3,630 to 8,170 kg.
The average weight of the individual stones at Coral Castle is greater than that used on the Great Pyramids in Egypt. Perhaps the most astonishing characteristic is the perfectly balanced Nine Ton Gate that can be turned by the touch of a child.
Although the gate is uneven in its dimensions, Ed was able to locate the exact center of balance so the heavy stone could easily swing on top of a recycled automotive gear. Ed Leedskalnin had a keen interest in astronomy, and his sculptures were inspired in part by celestial objects and their movements. Always pointing to the North Star in Ursa Minor, the Polaris Telescope stands 25 feet 7.5 meters high and weighs 25 tons, 22,675 kg.
Polaris is a fixed star that is always visible at night through the opening in the telescope. It helped Ed plot the Earth’s path around the sun and enabled him to design and construct a sundial that also indicated the solstice and equinox days. The sundial is so accurate that it is possible to determine Standard time within one or two minutes any time of the year. His celestial sculptures range from an 18-ton (16,330 kg) carving of Mars and another of Saturn, to enormous crescent moons, a Sun Couch, a Throne Room, and a Moon Fountain.
Since Ed Leedskalnin had a personal belief that there was life on Mars, he placed a Palmetto plant in the Mars sculpture as a symbol of life. The extraction and lifting of such incredible amounts of coral stone without the use of electricity or modern cranes and using only handmade tools seems unbelievable for a single man who was known to be an eccentric loner.
Baffled engineers have compared Ed’s secret method of construction to the enigmatic megalithic buildings of prehistory. Many people asked the little Latvian how he was able to excavate and position such heavy objects. He would only say that he understood the secrets of how the Great Pyramids were built. Was it possible that Ed Leedskalnin was a revitalized Egyptian architect who retained past-life knowledge of secret levitation techniques? Some would argue there is no other explanation.
Coral Castle nestled between the Florida Keys and Miami. Hence, the privately owned Coral Castle is open for self-guided tours from 9 a.m. to 9 PM every day. Conveniently located at 28655 South Dixie Highway on the main drag in Homestead, the Coral Castle is centrally located only “a stone’s throw away from Exit 5 South,” according to the tourist brochure. Just outside of Homestead are the fantastic natural preserves of Everglades National Park and John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park. Coral Castle reminds us of a great effort put in by a little man.
