The Castillo San Felipe del Morro is a massive fort built by the Spaniards between 1539 and 1786 to protect the half-mile-wide entrance to San Juan Bay and San Juan harbor. The fortress has six levels and rises 140 feet above the Atlantic Ocean. Its external walls are 18 feet (5.5 m) thick.
The current appearance is based on a 1587 design that followed state of the art Spanish military fortification design principles. El Morro suffered several attacks from the English in 1595 and 1598 and the Dutch in 1625. In 1898, during the Spanish-American War, United States Navy ships fired upon the fortification, destroying the lighthouse, which was rebuilt in 1908.
It remained a Spanish garrison until Puerto Rico was ceded to the United States as a result of the Spanish–American War of 1898. The fort became a part of a large U.S. Army post, called Fort Brooke. During World War II, the United States Army added a massive concrete bunker to the top of El Morro to serve as a Harbor Defense Fire Control Station to direct a network of coastal artillery sites and to keep watch for German submarines which were ravaging shipping in the Caribbean. The fort was de-militarized in 1961 and turned over to the National Park Service which still maintains the fort today.
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