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Arrival
of the Spanish
It
is a lively past from whence the Florida Keys evolved, complete with tales of pirating, lost treasures and battles with the
Indians. But before the lore, it was the coral reefs that provided the foundation for this stretch of islands we now call
the Florida Keys. The word Key comes from the Spanish word cayo, which means little island. The Florida Keys, therefore, means
"little islands of Florida". The first people, Paleoindians, to settle Florida and the Keys arrived about 13,000 years
ago when the Keys were forest covered hills and Florida Bay was covered with forests as well. Because of Glaciation and the
lowered sea level, Florida had twice the land mass that it has today. The Paleoindians, native American Indians built their
villages along the seashore and near the mouth of streams. With the melting of glaciers and the subsequent rise in sea level
those settlements are now under 150 feet of water making them difficult if not impossible to find.
Archeologists have unearthed evidence of settlements in the Florida Keys going back several thousand years ago and proof of
early Indian habitation has been found on nearby Grassy Key, Islamorada, Key Largo, and Key West. Excavations show that such
inhabitants depended on the sea for much of their food, and for making weapons and tools. Parts of the conch shell were used
to make throwing or projectile weapons and shells were used for making axes. Shells were also utilized as bowls, pots and
dippers. They lived in rough shelters of log and thatch palm leaf.
Evidence of an Indian settlement in Key Largo exists on the bayside just north of Coral Shores School. There archeologists
have found traces of a large midden or Indian rubbish mound with discarded shells, bones, and pottery shards which date back
several thousand years.
The Native American presence in the Keys inclded the Vescaynos and Matecumbeses and later, the Calusas and Seminoles. When
the Calusa Indians came, they shared the Keys with the Spaniards who returned to the Keys to salvage their treasure galleons
that had run aground on the reefs. Eventually most of the Calusas fell prey to Spanish slavers and victim to the diseases
of the New World. What remained of the Seminole tribe following the Seminole Wars of the 1840s escaped to the Everglades where
their descendents remain today.
These little islands had been home only to the Indians until the arrival of the history making Spanish Ponce de Leon expedition.
When the expedition first arrived here in the early sixteenth century, these explorers were looking for the Fountain of Youth
but instead found money to be made in logging the great old Mahogany trees that grew here. Thus began the Keys' long history
of absorbing visitors, confronting commercial development, and accepting manmade changes in its landscape. The Spanish didn't
see any use for the Florida Keys except logging the mahogany and taking some Calusas as slaves. The Spanish were really after
gold and they didn't find any here. The Florida Keys will always be an exotic world of tropical adventure to those who visit,
and a special tropical paradise to those who who are lucky enough to stay.
There was also no fresh water, no dirt to grow things in, and way too many insects. The Spanish left these stony islands
and moved on, but they did make note of the Florida Keys for their maps. Soon after their arrival, the Straits of Florida
saw hundreds of Spanish Galleons traversing the area with gold from Central America bound for Spain. Too bad the Spanish mapmakers
didn't make better maps of the reef outside the Florida Keys, since many of them wrecked there in the following years. Descendants
of Englishmen who settled in the nearby Bahamas cruised the reef near Key West for these wrecks, beginning in the 1700s. They
didn't really come to shore to live on Key West until the US won Florida from the Spanish in 1821. In order to continue their
lucrative careers as wreckers, they had to become residents of the US, so they began living on the island.
Arrival
of the United States, settlers and Henry Flagler and his railroad
The
Keys back then were deserted and remote, and seemingly uninhabitable. As time passed and the United States came into existence,
and the new US Government worked on its plan of Western and Southern expansion, settlers began to arrive. The first settlement
appeared in the 1820s in Key West, also called Cayo Hueso, which means Bone Island. There were bones all over Key West before
the settlers arrived and cleaned them out in the 19th Century. The bones were human bones, and they were the remains of Calusa
Indians, who used the island as a burial ground.
Florida wasn't even a state yet when settlers made their stake on Key West. They didn't bother with the rest of the Keys,
which remained au naturel and deserted. About two decades after the first settlers arrived here, the US began construction
on Fort Zachary Taylor, initiating Key West's long history with the US military. Fort Taylor was an army base until the 1940s,
when it was turned over to the Navy, which had a much larger presence here and continues to do so up into the present day.
Nine years after the end of the US Civil War, the US government looked toward the rest of the Florida Keys with an eye
towards developing its homesteading program.
These new settlers used whatever they could find to build their homes, including wood washed up on shore from shipwrecks.
These settlers must have really been put to the test when you consider how unhospitable this area was without air conditioning,
running water, insect control, or farmable land. The mosquitos were thicker than air and means of eradicating them were primitive
and not very effective. Try wrapping cheesecloth around your head and taking a walk in a swamp sometime. They burned smudge
fires day and night, which was what the Indians here and in the Everglades used to do.
These brave settlers who suffered those early days fished, farmed and went to church had a very different lifestyle than
their fellow-settlers living a pirate lifestyle in Key West. Their wilder neighbors to the West were wreckers but they were
also farmers. They managed to pull pineapple, melons, coconuts, and oranges from the rocky land. They used small boats to
carry their produce out to larger boats that took their wares to larger markets.
The small boats were their mode of transportation until the arrival of Henry Flagler in 1905. His railroad down the East
Coast of Florida was then extended through Homestead and the Everglades and into Key Largo. It took seven years of construction,
disease, hurricanes suffering, and many worker deaths to get the railroad all the way to Key West, but it finally arrived.
The railroad essentially cut off the farming communities of the Upper Keys since now Key West was open to receive produce
from all over the Carribbean for shipment via the railroad to the mainland. The farmer-settlers had really depleted the fragile,
thin topsoil of the Upper Keys by this point anyway, so the end was near. The Great Hurricane of 1935 finally did them all
in and most of the towns along the way to Key West just disappeared.
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