The Hidden Graveyard of Dry Tortugas National Park

The Hidden Graveyard of Dry Tortugas National Park

As members of the 82nd Regiment of the United States Colored Infantry (known colloquially as the 82nd Colored Troop) approached their new duty station on the remote Dry Tortugas islands, magnificent frigatebirds and sooty terns soared overhead. Gradually, the massive red-brick outpost of Fort Jefferson came into view, rising above blue-green waters. It was September 1865 and just five months earlier the infantrymen had helped take Fort Blakeley,…