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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780974352497 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Palm Island Press |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2014 |
| Edition description: | Fifth Edition, Fifth edition |
| Pages: | 560 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.20(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
June Keith's Key West & The Florida Keys
By June Keith
Palm Island Press
Copyright © 2014 June KeithAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-9906817-1-7
CHAPTER 1
A Brief History of Key West
SPANISH EXPLORER Ponce de Leon is credited with discovering Florida and claiming it for Spain in 1513. When de Leon's expedition sailed past the southernmost islands of Spain's newest land acquisition, his sailors viewed the dense and twisted mangroves along the islands' shores and called them Los Martires, which translates as "the martyrs."
On a later visit to Florida in 1521, Ponce de Leon was killed in a battle with Florida Indians protesting Spain's intentions to turn the savages into Christians. Along with several missionaries, de Leon died after being shot by a poison arrow.
A century later the island of Key West began to appear in charts and maps of the Caribbean with the name Cayo Hueso or Bone Key. This, according to legend, was because the bones of dead Indians lay scattered on the beach when the first explorers came ashore.
As European settlers began chasing northern Indians off land along the U.S. east coast, tribes were forced to push farther south. The Calusa Indians of South Florida were forced by stronger, more warlike Indians from northern Florida southward and into the Keys. The Calusas fled from island to island until they reached Key West and could go no farther. Here they fought a final bloody battle that left their sun-bleached bones strewn on the beaches. The hardiest of the Calusas escaped in boats to Cuba, where they eventually spawned a strain of long-legged Cubans.
In 1815, Spain awarded the remote and generally useless island of Key West to Juan Pablo Salas, a St. Augustine native who'd proven himself, in word and in deed, invaluable to his country.
Salas later sold the island, which he'd made no move toward civilizing, to American businessman John Simonton for $2,000. Simonton recognized the potential of the island's deep-water harbor. Convincing others of this, he divided the island into quarters and sold three of them to fellow businessmen Whitehead, Fleming and Greene.
It is unclear exactly why the name Key West replaced Cayo Hueso. Perhaps it is the name Cayo Hueso twisted on an English-speaking tongue. (Say Cayo Hueso five times fast and see what happens.) Perhaps because the name refers so appropriately to Key West's westernmost position in the island chain. In any event, by the time Simonton and his friends took over and started naming island streets after themselves, Key West had become the working name of the place, and eventually it stuck.
After arranging his finances and naming a street after himself, Simonton contacted the U.S. Navy and suggested to them that since Key West is strategically located in the northern Caribbean, it might be a perfect place for them to set up a base of operation.
The USS Shark, captained by Lieutenant Matthew C. Perry, sailed into the harbor in 1822 with orders from the Secretary of the Navy to investigate the potential of the island and its harbor, "with a view to further measures for its occupation and for the establishment of a port of rendezvous and for commerce."
Just what Simonton and his pals were hoping for!
Lieutenant Perry's report to his superiors in Washington was very favorable. But the news wasn't all good. Perry reported that there was "among the decent folks on the island tending to their legitimate seafaring interests, a small band of desperados who have paid but little regard to either law or honesty." But the island's God-fearing settlers would keep this wild bunch in line, he suggested.
Lieutenant Perry claimed Key West in the name of the United States in March 1822 and hoisted the U.S. flag. Sailors aboard the Shark fired a thirteen-gun salute. Then, their job done, Perry and the USS Shark sailed away.
The desperado problem, however, proved to be more unmanageable than Perry had estimated. Pirates of the area continued to plunder, maim and kill in spite of the U.S. presence. In 1823 Captain David Porter was appointed commodore of the West Indies Anti-Pirate Squadron. Porter's mission was to protect American citizens and U.S. commerce from pirates. He was also charged with the duties of suppressing the slave trade and establishing a naval base on Key West.
The island, Porter reported back to his superiors in Washington, was certainly no place for a naval base. There was no fresh water, and the place swarmed with mosquitoes and sandflies. Nonetheless, Porter went ahead and assembled a fleet of shallow draft vessels known as the Mosquito Fleet and, in spite of several outbreaks of yellow fever among his ranks, made fast work of flushing pirates from the area.
Wrecks Ashore
These were pre-lighthouse days, so passage around the Florida Keys, even after the pirates had been chased out of the region, remained a dangerous endeavor. The reef area that lies seven miles to the south of Key West was an extremely hazardous passage when the weather kicked up or when captains unfamiliar with the Keys' tricky, shallow waters sailed up onto the razor-sharp edges of the reef.
Just off Florida Keys shores, the busy trade routes were being used regularly by vessels loaded down with every kind of cargo imaginable. In a few short years, wrecking and salvaging became Key West's primary business. Sharp-eyed citizens stood watch in high towers and searched the horizon for ships foundering on the reef. The first to arrive on the scene and offer assistance, became the captain in charge of salvaging as much of the cargo as possible.
By prior agreement, ship owners and their insurers shared recovered cargo with the salvagers of Key West. Half a recovered cargo, after all, was better than no cargo at all. The wrecking captain, in turn, then divided his share of the proceeds among his assistants. Much of the salvage was finally auctioned off, conveniently, in Key West, since federal legislation forbade any salvaged goods taken from U.S. waters to leave American ports.
Consequently, Key West was quickly becoming quite a prosperous port city. From its incorporation in 1828 until the 1850s, it was considered the richest city, per capita, in the United States. Wharves, shipyards and chandleries soon lined the harbor shore. Buyers from New York, Charleston, and Havana bid on salvaged goods such as fine wines, silks, laces, silverware and furniture from all over the world. Key West grew rich, if not in cash, then at least in fine possessions as wrecking proceeds trickled down into settlers' hands. Mothers and daughters might show up in church wearing new dresses made from a salvaged bolt of silk. The entire citizenry might find itself handsomely shod in fine leather shoes salvaged from a wrecked ship en route to New York. Wealth was everywhere!
But in addition to the profitable wrecking and salvaging industries, fishing, turtling and salt manufacturing had become crucial to the island's economic survival. Between the years of 1830 and 1861 Key West supplied much of the nation's salt, which, before refrigeration, was the chief method of food preservation. It was gleaned not from salt mines but from the sea. Shallow tidal pools on the south side of the island were covered with large, flat evaporating pans which filled with salt water during the wet spring and summer months. When the tidal pools receded during dry winter months, the water evaporated, leaving 340 acres of crystallized salt drying in the pans. Later, during the Civil War, Union soldiers closed down the salt industry when it was discovered that local Confederate sympathizers were smuggling Key West salt into the Confederacy. The salt industry resumed at the war's end, but was wiped out by a hurricane in 1876. By then, salt mines had been discovered on the mainland anyway.
To try to slow down the increasing wrecking that continued into the 1850s, the government began stationing "light boats" and, later, lighthouses, on the dangerous reefs. Sturdier, safer steamships began carrying the valuable cargo that once had been shipped aboard wooden schooners, which were dependent upon the wind and weather.
By 1855 Key West's population had grown to 2,700, and progress had dealt the business of wrecking some serious blows that would ultimately lead to its end.
Southernmost Yankees
Florida seceded from the Union in 1861. Meanwhile, in Key West, Fort Taylor, strategic to the defense of the city's harbor, was quietly commandeered by a troop of Union soldiers in the predawn hours one April morning that same year. It was expected that the townspeople would attack the fort, but that did not happen, and soon more troops arrived, assuring that Key West would be the only southern city to remain in Union hands for the duration of the war. There were, to be sure, plenty of Southern sympathizers in Key West, but with Union soldiers everywhere, they couldn't do much to support the Confederate cause. Key West was the only place in the country where you had to go north to join the South.
At that same time, the East Coast Blockade Squadron was headquartered in Key West as well. The squadron's mission was to stop blockade runners from sailing contraband to the Confederate troops via the Gulf of Mexico. Nearly three hundred blockade runners were arrested; their ships were impounded and anchored in Key West Harbor. America's most famous blockade runner is the fictional character, Rhett Butler of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind.
The New El Dorado
Because Key West's climate was so much like its nearby neighbor Cuba, only ninety miles away, it did not take long for someone to recognize the area's potential for cigar manufacturing. The first cigar factory was established on Wall Street in 1831. As Key West grew, so did the business of cigar manufacturing.
During the Cuban Revolution that began in 1868, thousands of Cubans emigrated to Key West to find better lives working in the cigar industry which the influx of manpower greatly expanded. Soon the cigar business was bringing over a million dollars into the city annually. By 1871, Cubans employed in the cigar industry were a powerful political force. The original San Carlos Institute, a center of nationalistic politics, was constructed on Duval Street. In the city-wide election of 1876, several Cuban-born men were elected to political offices, including that of mayor.
The devastating fire of 1886, which is believed to have been started in the San Carlos Institute, burned down nearly two thirds of the city, including several important cigar factories and many cigarmakers' houses. But the cigar industry recovered quickly and went on to reach its peak of production in 1890. By then 129 cigar factories operated on the island. Workers produced an amazing 100,000,000 cigars annually.
Cigar factory employees enjoyed excellent salaries and working conditions. Workers often donated up to 10% of their earnings to support Cuba's fight for independence from Spain. Attempting to interrupt the flow of cash to Cuban revolutionaries, however, Spanish agitators sparked conflicts among workers and instigated labor strikes, often based on the flimsiest of excuses. A major strike in 1890 occurred when workers claimed that pay was unfair for making various qualities of cigars. Factory owners paid the same wage for making all cigars, whether cheap ones or very expensive smokes.
To entice cigar manufacturers out of Key West and over to Tampa, incentives such as tax-free land and cheaper labor were offered to Key West factory owners. In Tampa, there were no unions. One by one the cigar manufacturers began to abandon Key West and its strife. So the great shift occurred. By the turn of the century, Key West had lost its position as America's leading producer of hand-rolled Cuban cigars.
Cleaning up with Sponges
Another important industry that started in Key West and moved to a more supportive venue was sponging. An enterprising businessman sailed a shipload of Keys natural sponges to New York City in 1850 and very quickly found a clamoring market for them. By 1890 Key West was the commercial sponging capital of the world.
Natural sponges are soft skeletons of animals that once had lived in the shallow waters surrounding the Keys. Prying them from the ocean floor, drying, cleaning and bleaching them in preparation for the marketplace was, and still is, a smelly and back-breaking job. Nonetheless, sponging was an important business. At the turn of the century, Key West's sponging fleet was 350 boats strong and employed 1400 men, who harvested up to 165 tons of natural sponges a year.
In time Key West spongers began indiscriminately harvesting sponge beds, ignoring laws designed to preserve the supply. In 1904 several sponge companies were established to take advantage of the rich sponge beds in Tarpon Springs, on Florida's west coast just north of Tampa. Once again Key West's remote location worked against it. Tarpon Springs spongers and merchants had a much easier time getting their wares to the world's shipping routes, and Tarpon Springs soon replaced Key West as the world's prime producer of sponges.
Eventually a weird and deadly sponge fungus destroyed all of the beds in the Florida Keys, and cheap synthetic sponges were invented to take the place of the expensive, natural ones. In the last twenty-five years sponge beds have become healthy and productive again. Several small businesses are harvesting Keys sponges today.
Remember the Maine
The battleship USS Maine sailed into Key West Harbor in June,1896. Officers and crewmen from the ship were soon incorporated into the community, making many friends and romantic liaisons here.
In late 1897, in a show of America's military strength as well as her support for American business interests in Cuba, President McKinley ordered the USS Maine to sail on to Havana. On February 15, 1898, the Maine was ripped apart by an explosion in Havana Harbor. Of 354 American crew members aboard, 266 were killed. Those who didn't die were badly burned. Many of the injured were taken by ship to Key West, where they were cared for by nuns at the Mary Immaculate Convent, which had been turned into a temporary hospital. The dead were also returned to Key West, the place where they'd known their last happiness. A special plot in the Key West Cemetery, where many of the victims of the explosion are buried, is a marvelous and moving monument to this bleak chapter in American history.
The cause of the explosion was never determined. Nonetheless, nine weeks later, on April 22, 1898, Spain and the U.S. officially went to war. A short war. It didn't take long for Spain to realize that the Spanish armed forces were no match for America's military might. After a three-month fight on two fronts half a world apart, the U.S. found itself in possession of an empire stretching from the Caribbean to the far Pacific. Not only did Spain grant Cuba its independence; by the time the peace treaty had been signed on August 12, 1898, Spain had also ceded Puerto Rico to the U.S. and cut a deal to sell the Philippine Islands to them for $20 million.
The Missing Link
By the turn of the century, Key West was one of the country's most sophisticated cities, with electricity, streetcars, telegraph cable and regular performances by touring European opera and ballet companies. These performances were frequently mounted in the San Carlos Institute, which was also called, during those palmy days, the San Carlos Opera House.
Moreover, the Overseas Railroad arrived on the island in January of 1912. It connected the entire Florida Keys with the rest of America via a 128-mile railroad to Miami. The railroad also became a link to Cuba. Passengers were able to train to Key West and then board a steamship that would carry them across the Florida Straits to Havana.
The Overseas Railroad, with its remarkable bridges and causeways, was labeled the "Eighth Wonder of the World." When the first train pulled into Trumbo Point in 1912, the event sparked the biggest celebration the island had ever seen.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from June Keith's Key West & The Florida Keys by June Keith. Copyright © 2014 June Keith. Excerpted by permission of Palm Island Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Key West: The Last Resort,A Brief History of Key West,
Architecture,
Nuts and Bolts,
Old Town Walking Tour,
Writers,
Art,
Theater,
Attractions and Museums,
Tours by Land, Sea and Air,
Annual Events,
Little Island, Big Fun,
Kidstuff,
Where's the Beach?,
Accommodations,
Dining,
Bars,
Shops,
The Perfect T,
Endless Love,
The Lower Keys: A Land That's Mostly Water; A Sea That's Mostly Sky,
A History Stranger Than Fiction,
Key Deer,
Bahia Honda,
Waters of the Lower Keys,
Nature Treats,
Legal Highs,
From the Ruins,
Biking,
Accommodations,
Dining,
Shops,
Middle Keys and Marathon: Nothing Succeeds Like True Grit,
Boom And Bust: A Whistle Stop Town,
Nuts and Bolts,
Theater,
Where's the Beach?,
Nature Hikes,
Big Fun,
Fishing,
Diving,
To The Sea,
Accommodations,
Dining,
The Purple Isles and Their Number One Passion,
A Bloody History,
Historic Landmarks,
Offshore Islands,
Beaches,
Fishing,
Diving,
Big Fun,
Tours by Land, Sea and Air,
Accommodations,
Dining,
Shops,
Sooner or Later Everyone Comes to Key Largo,
History,
Historic Sites,
John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park,
Diving,
Dolphins in Paradise,
Natural Wonders,
Big Fun,
Fishing,
Tours By Sea,
Accommodations,
Dining,
Shops,