The story of Ed's Sweet Sixteen - the fiancée who canceled their wedding and sent Ed spiraling into a lifetime of solitary monument-building - remains murky. Some accounts name her as Agnes Skuvst, a 16-year-old who supposedly rejected him the day before their wedding; others suggest a different woman named Hermīne Lūsis. But Ed insisted on the story, dedicating his life's work to a woman who rejected him. He never married. He rarely spoke to neighbors. He worked from sunset to sunrise, jealously guarding his methods. Whether the heartbreak was real or a romantic fiction he invented to explain his obsession, the result was the same: one man, alone in the Florida darkness, building a castle for a ghost.

Ed carved the coral limestone from his own property using hand tools: picks, wedges, saws, and a mysterious understanding of leverage. He moved blocks weighing thousands of pounds without witnesses. When neighbors asked to watch, he stopped work until they left. He relocated the entire structure from Florida City to Homestead in 1936 - ten miles by flatbed truck - apparently loading the multi-ton pieces himself. His equipment, still on site, includes tripods, chains, and pulleys that shouldn't have been sufficient. The math doesn't work. Ed weighed about 120 pounds. His blocks weighed 30 tons. Something is missing from the equation.

Ed claimed to understand the secrets of the Egyptian pyramids - how ancient peoples moved massive stones without modern technology. He hinted at magnetic forces, at understanding weight and balance in ways modern engineers don't. Skeptics note that clever lever systems can move enormous weights with modest force; nothing at Coral Castle necessarily requires explanation beyond skill and patience. But Ed's methods remain unknown because he refused to demonstrate them. He worked only when alone. He died without revealing how. The castle is either evidence of lost knowledge or a testament to what one determined person can accomplish with simple tools and 28 years of nights.

Coral Castle includes: a 9-ton swinging gate so perfectly balanced a child could move it with a finger (until it stopped working in 1986 and was repaired, though it never spun as smoothly again), a 28-ton obelisk, a functioning sundial, a telescope aimed at the North Star, stone chairs and tables, a throne room, and various astronomical alignments. The coral limestone creates organic, flowing shapes; the craftsmanship is remarkable regardless of methods. Ed charged visitors a dime during his lifetime. After his death from kidney failure in 1951, the property became a museum. It remains one of Florida's strangest attractions - a monument to obsession, heartbreak, or perhaps just loneliness.

Coral Castle Museum is located at 28655 South Dixie Highway in Homestead, Florida, roughly 30 miles south of Miami. Open daily; admission charged. Tours are self-guided with interpretive signage explaining each structure. The gift shop sells Ed Leedskalnin's self-published pamphlets on magnetism and cosmic force - nonsense to scientists, sacred texts to believers. The 9-ton gate no longer swings freely after repair attempts failed to replicate Ed's original balance. Miami has extensive lodging and dining; Homestead is the gateway to Everglades and Biscayne National Parks. Visit during cooler months; South Florida summers are punishing.