Coral Castle

Coral Castle sits just north of Homestead and is one of Florida's strangest tourist attractions. A nine-ton gate swings open at the touch of a finger, perfectly balanced on a truck-bearing pivot. A heart-shaped table weighs more than a small car. A telescope tower points at the North Star. Leedskalnin built it all with hand tools, pulleys, and what he called his "knowledge of the secrets of the pyramids."

The site has been open to the public since the 1950s and now operates as a museum. The atmosphere is part folk art, part roadside America, part conspiracy-magnet (Leedskalnin's death-bed phrase "I know the secret of the universe" still draws believers). It is small — an hour is plenty — but genuinely unlike anywhere else.

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A story
Latvian immigrant Edward Leedskalnin spent 28 years, working alone and at night, carving and arranging more than 1,100 tons of oolitic limestone into walls, gates, and furniture. He never explained how he moved the multi-ton blocks. He claimed it was a monument to his lost teenage love in Latvia, the girl who jilted him the day before their wedding.