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    Key West
    Key West
    Key West
    Ebook221 pages1 hour

    Key West

    By Lynn M. Homan and Thomas Reilly

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    About this ebook

    Key West's free-spirited ambiance and magnificent coral reefs help to create a unique and historic legacy and much more than a vacation destination.


    For centuries, explorers and adventurers, immigrants and entrepreneurs, artists and wanderers have come to the island oasis known as Key West. And today, this Florida city is like no other and home to them all. Through hurricanes, fires, labor strikes, and the tourism boom, the community of Key West has sustained a unique way of life and attracted a wide variety of people to its shores, including such famous figures as writers Ernest Hemingway and Tennessee Williams, President Harry Truman, and musician Jimmy Buffett. Whether strolling through the downtown historic district, searching eclectic shops for one-of-a-kind treasures, enjoying a piece of key lime pie, or participating in the look-alike contest during Hemingway Days, Key West offers endless opportunities for pleasure. The landmarks, the people, and the continuing story of Key West are the entertaining subject of this new photographic tribute.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateNov 9, 2000
    ISBN9781439610893
    Key West
    Author

    Lynn M. Homan

    As museum exhibit designers and the authors of more than 15 books, Lynn M. Homan and Thomas Reilly enjoy telling the stories behind the pictures. So grab a cool drink and a shady spot under a palm tree, and join the authors as they re-create the experience that is the Florida Keys.

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      Book preview

      Key West - Lynn M. Homan

      story.

      INTRODUCTION

      Ever since its documented discovery by Europeans, Key West has been known by many different names. Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon and his crew named the tiny island Los Martires, or the martyrs, in 1513. They were by no means, however, the first visitors to the area. Beginning as early as 800 A.D., groups of Native Americans, including Calusas, Matecumbes, Tequestas, and later, Seminoles, had populated many of the more than 800 islands extending southward from the mainland of Florida. Sometime in the 18th century, warring tribes are believed to have fought several pitched battles on the southernmost island, resulting in the death of hundreds. When their dried and bleached bones were discovered years later, the 2-by-4-mile piece of coral received the Spanish name Cayo Hueso, translated as Bone Key or Island of Bones. When the group of islands were ceded to Great Britain, the Anglicized version of Cayo Hueso became Key West.

      The island that would come to be known as Key West has had almost as many assertions of ownership as it has had different names. Juan Ponce de Leon gave Spain its claim in 1513. Considered to be of little value, the small chunk of coral became an English possession in 1763, only to return to Spanish control 20 years later. Still known by its somewhat forbidding name of Bone Island, Key West again changed ownership in 1815 when it was given to a Spanish officer, Juan Pablo Salas, as a reward for meritorious service to the King of Spain. Spain ceded Florida to the Americans in 1819; the United States officially took possession two years later. Colonization of the Keys began in earnest.

      At the end of 1821, John W. Simonton, an American businessman, purchased Juan Pablo Salas’ land for the grand sum of $2,000. He then divided the island into four sections, selling off three of the pieces of property. Representatives of the federal government quickly followed the pioneering settlers. Arriving aboard the U.S. Navy vessel Shark, Lieutenant Matthew C. Perry claimed the islands for the United States. Under the American flag, Key West flourished; the community was incorporated in 1828.

      The coming years witnessed a population explosion, turning Key West into a true melting pot. Newcomers from the Bahamas, many of English extraction and relatives of Tory sympathizers who had emigrated during the American Revolution, arrived in large numbers during the 1830s. Settlers from southern, eastern, and New England states established homesteads. Blacks, both slave and free, came from the states as well as the West Indies. During the late 1860s, thousands of Cubans fled a revolution in their homeland. Their relocation to Key West expanded an already existing cigar industry and led to an increasingly important social and political role. Military actions, including the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II, brought an influx of personnel to Key West.

      Fishing, turtling, wrecking and salvage, sponging, making cigars, processing salt, housing the military, and even smuggling were all endeavors that at one time allowed Key West to boast of being the wealthiest city in Florida, if not all of the United States. Unfortunately, forces both natural and manmade conspired to erode much of the city’s industrial base. The salt industry succumbed to the combined effects of the Civil War and a hurricane in 1876. Storms at sea drove ships aground on the coral reefs surrounding the Keys, giving rise to the island’s wrecking or salvage industry. This proved highly lucrative until lighthouses, lightboats, rescue stations, and other advances in marine safety eventually curtailed the profits. Military influence in the city expanded and contracted with the political circumstances of the nation. During wartime, Key West was an important installation; in peacetime, the military presence declined dramatically.

      Mother Nature frequently proved to be destructive—when storms and hurricanes came ashore, they caused loss of life, property damage, and in 1935, the destruction of the railroad. A disastrous fire in 1886 destroyed much of the city, including homes, businesses, and factories. Labor strikes a few years later led to the cigar industry’s relocation to Tampa. Key West had been known as the sponging capital of the world until a fungus in the sponge beds wiped out an industry that had employed hundreds.

      One of the events that would have a profound impact on the community was the construction of the Key West Extension of the Florida East Coast Railway, owned by multi-millionaire Henry Morrison Flagler. In distance, the trip wasn’t very far, only 128 miles from Homestead to Key West. The route spanned 42 stretches of open water, with 17 miles of viaducts and concreteand-steel bridges, and 20 miles of causeways built upon fill dredged from the ocean bottom. In reality, however, the journey had taken years. Although viewed by many as a miracle, Flagler had always known that this marvelous mechanical feat was a possibility.

      January 22, 1912, was a proud day for Henry Flagler and the people of Key West, as Extension Special pulled into Key West. Flagler’s private car, Rambler, sat at the end of the train made up of an engine, tender, and five passenger cars. The small island, over a hundred miles from the Florida mainland and formerly accessible only by ship, could now be reached by rail in only a few hours. The crowds were tremendous. Almost everyone living in Key West had turned out for the arrival of what was being trumpeted as The Eighth Wonder of the World. As the elderly, nearly blind Flagler addressed the welcoming committee, he said, We have been trying to anchor Key West to the mainland . . . and anchor it we have done.

      Key West had indeed been anchored to the mainland, but the cost had been high. The strain of building the railroad had been hard on the 82-year-old Flagler; he died the next year. One of the founders of the Standard Oil Company, Flagler had purchased a railroad from Jacksonville to St. Augustine in 1885. Slowly moving south, the line reached Homestead in 1904. A year later, construction began to extend the railroad to Key West. With Cuba less than one hundred miles from Key West, Flagler envisioned his railroad as a conduit to greater trade with the Caribbean island.

      It is little wonder that during construction the railroad was derisively called Flagler’s Folly. Conditions along the route were horrible; less hospitable land for construction could hardly be found. The heat of the Florida sun was nearly unbearable; mosquitoes, flies, alligators, and poisonous snakes all added to the burden. Blacks from Florida and the Bahamas were used for much of the backbreaking work of clearing dense underbrush.

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