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It's remote, challenging and, for 12 years, home

Life in the Dry Tortugas comes with dazzling views, tourists and spotty telephone service.

By Associated press
Published November 25, 2006

DRY TORTUGAS NATIONAL PARK - Heat lingered in the laundry room at Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas National Park, giving Eloise Pratt an unlikely moment's pause.

She had just done her final load of laundry at the fort, using her last few gallons of desalinated water drawn from the vast blue-green ocean that surrounds the isolated fort that has been her home for the past 12 years.

With her salt-and-pepper hair, easy smile and eyes in a permanent squint against the relentless sun, Pratt has greeted the throngs of camera-toting tourists who arrive by boat or seaplane daily in a sunburned frenzy to wander the Civil War-era fort, snorkel off its beaches and learn the history of the remote military stronghold that never was officially completed.

The next morning, she boarded a supply boat headed 70 miles east to Key West with her husband, Chuck, head of maintenance at the fort for the National Park Service. Pratt had sorted her final collection of recyclables into five bins that lined one wall of her kitchen. She had taken her favorite Reef Relief print off the wall of their apartment inside the red brick fort and walked arm-in-arm with Chuck around the fort's moat wall one last time as the sun sank behind an adjacent island.

"We're not at the end of the book, we're at the beginning of the next chapter," Chuck Pratt said, sitting in his stripped-down, second-floor living room, its contents already in waterproof boxes and stacked in the brick casement below.

For 12 years, the Pratts have awoken to a dazzling waterfront view framed by a red brick archway that formerly housed Civil War soldiers. They have burned their trash, collected rainwater in a giant cistern, cleared the beach of cigarette butts and answered the same question a thousand times, "What's it like to live here?"

It's remote. It's challenging. It's spectacular.

Workdays for the Pratts begin before the sun finds its way above the horizon around 5:15 a.m.

Chuck works on a list of projects that is constantly growing at the 160-year-old fort. Eloise greets the first seaplane arrival by 8:30 and the ferries begin arriving at 10:30 a.m. Then there are tours to give, rules to explain to campers and always garbage to recycle.

Evenings include a nightly acknowledgment of the sunset as it tie-dyes the sky. Then there's satellite television, books and Eloise's beadwork that keeps her occupied when the fort quiets down, night envelops the island and stars pepper the sky with a brightness known only in the deepest darkness.

But there have been scary moments. Chuck will never forget the small plane that crashed just off the fort and killed a cinematographer who was strapped to a seat in the plane. And Hurricane Wilma was the worst of all the hurricanes. The Pratts have weathered every hurricane since 1992 at the fort, pointing out that they are not dependent on electricity because of the three giant generators and supply of diesel fuel.

But the most chronically frustrating aspect has been the spotty telephone service. The couple has aging relatives, grown children and growing grandchildren, and living 70 miles from land with spotty phone service increases the isolation.

And then there's the dust.

It falls from the disintegrating mortar that has kept the bricks in place since the 1800s. And it keeps falling.

"Sometimes as you're sweeping, you can hear it falling behind you," Eloise said.

But she wouldn't have traded her 12 years on the island for anything. She captured many of those years in the 7,000 digital photos she took, and her eyes still brighten as she describes finding the first leatherback turtle on East Key in 2004.

The Pratts, who have owned a home in Key West since the 1970s and had lived there since 1958, arrived in the Dry Tortugas as volunteers for the National Park Service in 1992. Chuck was a retired custom carpenter and Eloise had spent 16 years volunteering at the Monroe County Library before they decided to head about 70 miles west for a different type of volunteering.

But the volunteering soon became employment for Chuck, and the Pratts joined the limited ranks of residents, which today includes 11 people, including Park Service employees and law enforcement officers.

The Pratts have a two-bedroom apartment on the second story of the fort because they have seniority.

Her tenure earned her a place in park history, when Ranger Willie Lopez welcomed a brand new ranger boat to the beach. It bears the name Eloise.

"We're going to miss her making sure we're drinking enough water, making sure our uniforms are on right, making sure people keep their kayaks away from the swimming beach," Lopez told the small crowd that gathered near the entrance to the park. "This boat is the last major project that Chuck made happen, and we felt this is what you deserved."

Eloise promptly hefted a bottle of champagne, shattered it over the anchor and uttered proudly, "I christen thee, Eloise."

The Pratts boarded the supply boat that has been their weekly lifeline to the real world one recent Thursday morning. It is the same boat that delivered grocery orders and other necessities to them over the years, and every 10 days ferried them to their Key West house for a four-day respite from the fort.

"I'd actually rather be here," Eloise said in discussing her departure. "Key West has just changed so much."

But Chuck is ready to retire and ready for the next adventure, even if it is landlocked.

[Last modified November 25, 2006, 06:17:46]