The train’s arrival forever altered the history of the Florida Keys and brought conveniences like daily mail, ice, and reliable transportation for visiting family members. Though trains were running daily from Miami to Knights Key as early as 1908, the Key West Extension of Henry…

Reynolds Cothron was born in Blackshear, Georgia, on Christmas Day 1866. He married Mary Emma Davis in 1893. By the turn of the century, Cothron was working as a section foreman for the Florida East Coast Railway and living with his growing family in Lemon…

Camp Panama was not found as far south as the name might infer. While headquarters operated out of a Miami location, the fishing camp was located in the Florida Keys. By January 1931, the fishing camp was being advertised, with rates for the camp ranging…

Etched into an Islamorada roadside marker is the assertion that Antonio Gomez established a Spanish Trading Post on Indian Key circa 1695. While the legendary tale could be accurate, there is no supporting documentation connecting a man of that name to a trading post on…

The USS Alligator was a swift, 12-gun schooner built to fight pirates and slave traders. The ship, constructed in the Boston Navy Yard, was commissioned in March of 1821. The Alligator’s first duty was ferrying representatives of the American Colonizing Society. The objective of the society, formed in 1817,…

By 1828, Key West was beginning to need additional resources, including those addressing the growing demands of political necessity like law and order, as well as men of the cloth, and, as more families began to build houses on the island, a growing need for…

The weathered inscription reads: “Here lieth the body of Capt. Jacob Housman, formerly of Staten Island, State of New York, Proprietor of the island, who died by accident May 1, 1841, aged 41 years 11 months. To his friends he was sincere, to his enemies…

James Biddle, the first commander of the West Indies Squadron, was relieved of his duty in 1822. The deeper-draft ships deployed by him struggled to pursue the pirates who favored shallow-draft vessels capable of better navigating the shoals and reefs of the West Indies. December…

Christopher Columbus was not the first European to sail the ocean blue and “discover” the New World. His 1492 arrival did make him the most famous. Thinking he had found a shortcut to India, Columbus named the indigenous people indios. The 1492 event would be the…

Circa 1548, on the first leg of a trip from the New World home to the Old World, a Spanish ship sailed away from Cartagena, Columbia. The ship reached Havana, Cuba, where it moored in the harbor to take on provisions before embarking on the…