Ed Leedskalnin spent nearly 30 years cutting and moving 1,100 tons of Florida limestone mostly alone at night; he died in 1951 without fully revealing his methods

For almost three decades, Edward Leedskalnin labored on his project without many people witnessing him doing so. This was because he constructed his creation mostly at night at a place in South Florida where he moved stones weighing more than the capacity of many industrial cranes of today. At the time of his death on December 7, 1951, he had managed to erect a structure made up of limestone, which he himself never managed to explain how.Buying land in Florida City in 1923 Leedskalnin was born in Latvia on January 12, 1887, according to the ‘About Edward Leedskalnin’ page on the official Coral Castle website. He grew up in a family of average financial resources and learned stonemasonry from his own family while still in Latvia. His whole life changed when his fiancée, whom he affectionately called his "sweet sixteen," left him for another man. Heartbroken, he left Europe, immigrated to the United States, and eventually settled in Florida after being diagnosed with tuberculosis. There, he bought a small piece of land for around $10-$12 and began what became his lifelong project: a monument made entirely out of stone in memory of the woman who had left him.Nearly three decades of solitary constructionWorking alone and almost always at night, Leedskalnin quarried and shaped about 1,100 tons of local oolitic limestone, a porous rock formed from ancient coral and shells that is considerably lighter than it looks. He relied on nothing more advanced than winches, pulleys and tools he built himself from salvaged car parts, a construction method described in an entry from the Encyclopaedia Britannica. One of his inventions was a nine-ton stone door pivoted on an iron pin and counterbalanced with ball bearings, so that it could be opened with just one finger. Leedskalnin himself stood barely five feet tall and weighed about 120 pounds; there was no clear explanation for how a person of his stature was able to lift such massive blocks.Relocating the entire structure in 1936In 1936, Leedskalnin found out that there was a plan for a housing complex near his land in Florida City and to avoid any loss of privacy, he chose to relocate his entire structure. He bought a ten-acre plot of land about ten miles away in Homestead, where he relocated his complete stone carvings one by one, a process that is said to have taken two to three years, as per Visit Florida.He also did his moving work only at night, when he filled the gaps in his walls with smaller rocks so that no one would be able to see through them during the day. He managed to move the stones with a truck chassis fitted with rails, towed by his friend's tractor. It is estimated that one of the stones being moved was between 29 and 30 tons.A method he took to his graveVisits to Leedskalnin's land were charged 10 cents per person, but he later increased it to 25 cents. As visitors entered his land, the stone sign at the entrance read: ‘You will be seeing unusual accomplishment’. When people would ask him how he constructed such an elaborate castle, all he could give away was the use of physics, levers and the "secrets" of construction in ancient buildings such as the Pyramids. He died on December 7, 1951, at the age of 64, from pneumonia. He spent almost thirty years building what he built largely on his own, using construction methods he never wrote down or demonstrated to anyone else.Catch the latest World News and Live updates. Download the TOI app.