San Juan National Historic Site

The National Park Service is using modern technology to share holiday greetings from parks across the country. Short videos filmed in 15 parks are airing on the National Park Service's YouTube channel through the end of the month.

A long project that restored a bit of history has been completed at San Juan National Historic Site, where crews have completed restoration of the water cisterns that lie beneath the plazas of Castillo San Felipe del Morro and Castillo San Cristóbal.

The largest fortification built by Europeans in the New World features dungeons, a labyrinth of tunnels, and massive rock walls that fall 150 feet straight onto the rocks of a rugged shoreline. No wonder San Juan National Historic Site was chosen for a scene in the next "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie.

From time to time there are cases of folks digging in remote areas of national parks, either for fossils, archaeological artifacts, or whatever. It's seldom that you hear of instances in which treasures were buried at a park site, but that's exactly what seems to have occurred nearly 18 years ago after a theft at San Juan National Historic Site.

San Juan National Historic Site celebrates its 60th birthday today, February 14. This remarkable park, America's only national park in Puerto Rico, preserves some of the finest Spanish Colonial-era coastal forts left in the Caribbean. Many people believe that one of these forts is haunted.