The Man Who Moved a Castle for a Girl Who Never Came

In 1923, a Latvian immigrant named Edward Leedskalnin bought an acre of Florida scrubland for ten dollars and began carving it into a monument. He stood five feet tall. He weighed just over a hundred pounds. He had a fourth-grade education. Over the next twenty or so years, working alone and almost exclusively at night, he quarried and sculpted more than 1,100 tons of coral limestone into walls, towers, a 22-ton obelisk, and a 9-ton revolving gate so perfectly balanced a child could push it open with one finger.

He never let anyone watch him work.

The story goes that a girl back in Latvia had broken off their engagement the night before the wedding. Leedskalnin never named her — he called her only his "Sweet Sixteen" — and he built the entire complex, he said, for her. She never visited. He claimed to understand the secrets of the Egyptian pyramids. When anyone asked how a hundred-pound man moved thirty-ton stones alone, his standard answer was: "It's not difficult if you know how."

He lived in a two-story stone tower with no running water or electricity. He ate crackers and sardines. When he fell ill in 1951, he hung a sign on the gate — "Going to the Hospital" — and took the bus. He died twenty-eight days later. Among his belongings they found $3,500 in cash and no explanation for anything.

In 1986, Billy Idol filmed the music video for "Sweet Sixteen" inside the castle. The album went platinum.

Framed photos of his visit hang in the gift shop.