Pigeon Key and Florida East Coast Railway

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Today we visited Pigeon Key, a small island located about 2 miles west of the east end of the Seven Mile Bridge.  Access to the island was by boat ferry that leaves from Knights Key, which is at the east end of the bridge.

Pigeon Key contained a work camp that housed the workers for four years while the bridge was being built.  It later served as a maintenance headquarters for the Middle Keys.  After the rail was closed and a highway was built on top, around 1938, Pigeon Key became a rest stop with restaurant and motel.  When the new overseas highway opened in the 1980s, the state gave Pigeon Key to the University of Florida where Marine Biology of the Gulf is being studied.

As we have travelled along  US 1, few remnant's of the original railway exist today.  In this area there is about a 10 mile stretch, mostly bridges, of the original rail that had been converted to the first overseas highway.  Some areas have been revamped and are used as fishing piers.  A two mile stretch leading to Pigeon Key from Knights Key is open to foot and bike traffic.  Unfortunately, the ramp down to Pigeon Key was closed for repair a couple weeks ago, so you now must go by boat.

The old bridge is in the foreground, the pilings and the current bridge appear behind. Once the Florida East Coast Railway Extension was complete, one could travel from New York to Key West then onto Cuba by ship in about a day.  The cost to go between Jacksonville and Key West was $28, very affordable in the 1920s.  The Extension was considered the 8th wonder of the world.  The bridges were a mere 2 or 3 feet wider than the train and about 20 feet above the water.  So the sensation of traveling on the water was a big draw.

   

This painting depicts the train traveling on one of the 42 bridges that spanned nearly 80 miles of water.  It also shows the different types of span and pier designs used, depending on the water depth.  The US Army Corps of Engineers recently inspected many of the piers still in existence  and found all to be sound.  A testament to their design and construction.

As we mentioned earlier, on Labor Day 1935, a category 5 hurricane struck the Keys near Islamorada taking out several miles of track stopping the train, then sweeping the cars off the track.  Tragically, the train had been dispatched to rescue 400 WWI veterans who had just arrived to begin work on an overseas highway to link Key West to the mainland.  All aboard were killed.  Only the engineer and foreman survived.

This event signaled the end of the Florida East Coast Railroad Extension.  Henry Flagler spent over $20 million and 11 years to build it in 1912.  It was sold to the state for $640,000.  Florida spent the next three years modifying it for use by cars.  The following shows the extension installed to increase the width for a 2 lane road.

 

Much of the railway was used for car traffic until 1982, when the new highway was constructed.  Note the railing, they used the RR tracks to make the railing on the bridges.  Recycling in the 1930s.  As more truck and RV traffic started using the road, it was clear the bridges were not wide enough.  Today driving US1 is a nonevent, but in the 70s and early 80s, it was probably a white knuckle experience.

If you have made it this far without falling asleep, or dozed off a couple times, you might find the engineering and construction of these bridges interesting.   For example they used a German made concrete that would set up in saltwater.  There is quite a bit of information on the web.  For the early 1900s it was cutting edge.  As you can tell, we have found it to be fascinating.

Bahia Honda & Key West

Saturday, October 25, 2014

Wow, woke up to blue sky and sunshine.  It’s the first time we have seen the sun since last Sunday.  In the last two days we heard some parts of the Keys got 10 inches of rain.  As you might imagine, there are big puddles around.  We were glad our campsite was on a concrete pad.

We departed Pennekamp about 10:30 with plans to make a stop along the way before getting to Bahia Honda State Park.  We had several choices, but decided on Crane Point at Mile Marker 50 south of Marathon.  This is a 63 acre preserve owned by a non-profit group with a mission to save hardwood hammocks from development.

Crane Point is named for Francis and Mary Crane who owned the property in 1954, but the draw for us was the Adderley House.  George Adderly moved to this area with his family from the Bahamas.  About 30 others joined him later; time period, early 1900s.  The interesting thing was that George used tabby for his house.  Tabby is a mixture of sand, lime, and rocks or shells.  Lime was made by burning shells, usually oyster at a high temperature.  It was dangerous work because the lime was caustic.  They used salt water to make the tabby, but then had to remove the salt or the concrete would be weak.  Not sure how they did that.  This is a picture of Tabby construction.

Tabby was used like mortar between the rocks and shells to form the walls, then more Tabby was used like stucco to provide a smooth wall surface.

Considering this house is over 100 years old and has survived numerous hurricanes, offers testament to the durability of the construction method.

This is a hammock, which means drier tolerant plants and trees.  There are also strand areas containing mangroves trees.  A surprising find were cactus in the hammock areas.

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Back on the road toward Bahia Honda SP we crossed the seven mile bridge.  Along side is the old bridge that Flagler built.  This stretch of the old railway is not wide enough to support today’s highway requirements, so the new span was built.  Seeing the arches used to support the rail and the fact that they are still intact after 100+ years of storms is impressive.

Although pretty nice, this park is not quite as nice as Pennekamp.  The electric is convenient, but the water is a good 75 feet away and it is noisy.  US1 runs within 100 yards of the campground and since it’s elevated and surrounded by water, the traffic noise is high.  Lucky Lynn, she will not be bothered by it for sleeping.

We finished off the day wandering around the park, here are some pictures.

Bay Bean

Monday October 27, 2014

Today we are off to Key West, about 35 miles down the road.  We heard the place can get zooey later in the day, so we got an early start.  The Island Fest wrapped up yesterday, so we are hoping for a quieter day.

First stop was the Southern Most marker.  Probably everyone who visits KW takes a picture, here is ours.

First impressions of Key West…..cross between Old McDonald’s Farm and Jurassic Park.  Chickens are running around everywhere, they’re more common than pigeons.  And there are lizards, big lizards, like 3 feet big!  We understand there is an iguana problem here due to release of pets.

Although we have seen many lighthouses, we wanted to visit the one in Key West to have a chance to climb to the top for a look around.  There was a bonus, the grounds had Seward Johnson statues.  We have seen several of his pieces in Cadillac.  They are bronze with either paint or an alloy to modify the bronze color.  Here are a couple pictures.

  

The lighthouse was also interesting since its early keeper was a woman, Barbara Mabrity. Actually, she got the job when here husband died.  They had six kids, so for obvious reasons, stayed on the job so she had a house and a small wage.  In 1846, the original lighthouse, a wooden structure at the edge of the island got blown away by a hurricane.  It also took the lives of all her children, only she survived.

The current lighthouse was relocated inland to a high spot and made of concrete.  In 1847 she resumed her duties until the age of 82.  Think about hauling oil, trimming wicks, climbing 88 steps 4-5 times a day.  We did it once and that was enough!

Not being big fans of Hemmingway or Truman, we skipped past those houses to tour.  We did stop at Flagler Station, the old depot for the Florida East Coast Railway.  Inside was a lot of info about construction of the bridges, Flagler’s life, and the FECR Extension.  We plan to visit Pigeon Key tomorrow and expect to learn more, so we will cover Flagler and the Florida East Coast RR in a later post.

We stopped at Kermit’s for a badly over priced piece of Key Lime Pie.  Very tasty!  Mallory Square and the Historic Seaport were interesting but a bit touristy for our liking.  The Key West Art Museum is in the old US Customs House.

 

The Historic Boat Basin was a collection of really big yachts, fishing charter boats, shops, and restaurants.

 

In Mallory Square, was a sculpture park with busts and descriptive signs telling about the individual.  Additionally, a statue depicts Wreckers.  The guys would salvage cargo and ships that ran aground on the reef.  It was big business.  Unscrupulous Wreckers put up lights intentionally mismarking the reef location before the lighthouse was built.  Despite the later presence of a lighthouse, it was still common to have 500 shipwrecks per year.  The salvage of these shipwrecks spawned a large import export business for Key West.  .

 

Our last stop to tell you about was the Key West Cemetery.  The draw to come here is the Spanish/American War Memorial.  Not surprising due to elevation above sea level, almost all graves are above ground mausoleums.

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Lizards and Chickens

This one was in the cemetery.

In the middle of the street, for crying out loud!

Upper Keys Part 2

Thursday, October 23, 2014

Woke up to rain this morning.  A tropical storm seems to have stationed itself over the Keys and it is supposed to rain a bunch over the next couple days.  The pattern however seems to dissipate a little during the later morning into early afternoon hours.  Geez, just our luck to have this happen during our Keys visit.

It kind of puts a damper on things.  We went to a nearby visitor center in Key Largo early today.  We had questions about Key West regarding parking and got some worthwhile tips.  We also asked about inside, out of the rain, activities we might consider while here in Key Largo.  The answer was, “This is not an area with any indoor activities, other than shopping.”  Swell!  Well they did have WiFI, so we caught up on emails, etc.

From here we drove down US1 to Windley Key, a limestone coral fossil park.  As some of you may know, Dan developed an interest in the construction of the Florida East Coast RR extension to Key West.  The project was undertaken by Henry Flagler.  In the 1800s Flagler was a partner with John D. Rockefeller in Standard Oil.  We’ll develop the story as we go, but at Windley Key, Flagler found a great supply of limestone to use for his RR bed.  The area was 13 feet higher than the rest of the Keys, so no fear it would flood.

This wall was mined by Flagler for his railroad.  The process involved drilling down every few inches, then dropping in some dynamite.  Boom, you now have the crushed limestone.  Note the drill marks that remain on the wall.  The following are close ups of the surface.

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This mound of limestone is actually a fossilized bed of coral.  Today you can walk along the walls of the quarry and see all sorts of coral fossils.  After the railroad was completed to Windley Key in 1912. Slabs of polished coral, called Keystone, were then taken from the quarry for decorative panels, walls, and tables. They were delivered by the FEC RR.  The Quarry was active until the 60s.

Henry Flagler was a partner with Rockefeller in Standard Oil, owning about half the company.  When the company went public Flagler owned nearly half the stock.  He then retired (sort of) but pursued various business opportunities along Florida’s east coast.  His Florida East Coast Railway that started in Jacksonville, had worked its way to Miami.

Flagler saw an opportunity, there were plans for Key West to become a major port and his railway could become a commercial link with Miami.  It took 10 years to build and Flagler, at age 82, finally got to ride his rail to Key West.  The train operated for about 15 years, but never had the success Flagler envisioned.

On September 2, 1935 a category 6 hurricane struck the Keys.  Hundreds died.  The hurricane took out about a mile of the track and toppled the railcars containing people the train was trying to evacuate.  The only thing left on the track was the engine.  Already nearly bankrupt, FEC RR was sold to the state of Florida.  They tore out the rail and put in the highway, US1.  Much of Flagler’s old rail bed is the base for US1, including his amazing pilings and arches.  More on those in a later post.

A memorial was erected for all those killed in the 1935 hurricane on the location at Matecumbe Keys where the devastation was worst.  A crypt lies in front containing the cremated remains of hundreds killed.

The base and surfaces are from Flagler’s quarry in Windkey.  

Our final stop today was at the Bass Pro Offshore Fishing Shop.  The draw here is inside the store.  A sister of Hemmingway’s boat’s Pilar has been restored and contains some Hemmingway memorabilia.  His original boat is a rotted hulk in Cuba.  The store is pretty interesting.

Friday October 24, 2014

It rained cats and dogs all night.  We were hoping we would not find ourselves adrift this morning when we got up.  And it is still raining at noon.  So we have headed to the library to use their WiFi.  If the rain lets up later, we may have time to hit a couple of other places on our to-do list.

A while back we did a post about a boat ride in Everglades City, here is a You Tube video.

http://youtu.be/zZUcqvxJX3k

Tomorrow we move down the Keys about 50 miles to Bahia Honda State Park on Big Pine Key.  We got more cool stuff planned, so don’t unfasten your seat belt.

The Upper Florida Keys

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Today we arrived at John Pennakamp Coral Reef State Park near Key Largo.  This is a really nice park with full hook-ups and a WiFi hot spot near the visitor center. Our site is on a concrete pad.  Since it is a very popular campground our check-in was delayed as the previous tenants were still on site past the 1PM check out time.  We finally got set up, but late in the day, so we visited the visitor center and their aquarium, which was pretty neat.

The Florida Keys are a string of islands (Keys) connected by US highway 1 that extends to Key West.  The further down US 1 you go, the smaller the islands become and the more remote until reaching Key West.  Key Largo is the largest, about 14 miles long and 7 miles wide.

The draw for us here is primarily two activities; the first is snorkeling the coral reef that lies about 5 miles off shore in the Atlantic Ocean and second, the Key of Islamorada, the fishing charter boat capital of the world.  

Monday, October 20, 2014

Well as luck would have it,  the weather has deteriorated since yesterday, with big rain overnight and wind.  This morning it is overcast, but not raining, so we thought we would try the snorkeling this AM.  We chose the 4 hour trip run by a Florida State Park Concessionaire, which visits 3 locations.

It was windy with a good two 2 foot waves, kind of a tough go, but the views were awesome.  Check out the pictures below.

Brain Coral

Statue - Christ of the Abyss

The statue stands seven feet tall, made of bronze on a concrete base.  It lies in 20 feet of water. 

Its like swimming around in an aquarium.  There are all kinds of coral and fish.  Some coral is soft, some is hard.  The fish are a rainbow of colors.  This is a unique and unforgettable experience!

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

We wanted to do a charter boat fishing trip, however the cost was more than we cared to spend. We needed to find another party to split the charter cost.  So the captain called and told us he had another party.  We arrive at Whale Harbor in Islamorada, about 20 miles and 2 keys down from the campground and guess who the other party is?

Its our son Brad, who flew down here to fish with us as a surprise!  Wow, this tops everything so far this trip and probably everything else we’ll do.  Now, if that wasn’t enough, we caught 27 fish!  Mostly Mahi-Mahi, with some others.  Check this out!

As you can see, the charter was Sea Horse Charters, the captain was Captain Rick Rodriguez, the First Mate was Jeremy.  These guys know where the fish are and how to catch them.  As we hit schools, it would not be unusual to have three or four on at a time.  By the end of the day our arms ached from reeling these guys in.  They were all fierce fighters. 

That’s Captain Rick cleaning fish.  If you want to catch some fish, these are the guys to see.  By the way, they told us it was the off-season.  Really?  When we got done we had about 75 pounds of fillets!

We cooked some up for dinner, man it doesn’t get better than that.

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Much of the morning was spent repackaging the fish and buying a small fridge.  With good packaging we managed to get them in the trailer’s freezer.  Our current frozen food got transferred to the small fridge which will get emptied as we go.  The trailer freezer will not get opened again until we get home.

Brad wanted to snorkel the Coral Reef, so he and Dan went out on the same tour we took on Monday.  We really enjoyed our time with Brad, and look forward to some more fish dinners when we get home.

Swamp Part 2

Saturday, October 18, 2014

Today we traveled to Everglades City, which lies about 40 miles west of the campground.  This little town has some interesting history and a NPS concessionaire offers a variety of boat tours.  The one we chose carries six people and goes into some mangrove swamps.  The other is a larger boat and travels into the Ten Thousand Islands ending up in Everglades Bay.

We were not disappointed.  The boat was about an 18 ft Boston Whaler that we buzzed around islands, down narrow channels, then into a cluster of mangroves, through a very narrow channel that looked like another world.  Check out the pictures below.

 

We also saw some wildlife, like another of Florida’s big spiders.  This was one of many with webs spanning across the channel in the mangroves.  This guy was about a foot above our heads as we passed!  If you were standing he would have smacked you in the face.

The cute little guy is a Mangrove Crab.  Soft bodied, he’s more like a toad that looks like a crab.

And we saw birds,

White Ibis

Not sure of species on this one.  We also had dolphins chasing the boat, they like to play in the boat wake.  Pretty cool to watch.

As mentioned, Everglades City has quite a history.  In 1910 to 1920, Florida was getting going as a commercial interest and as a tourist destination.  Everybody loved the warmth in the winter and the recreational aspects.  Everglades City was a very desirable place to visit.  A river passes through town and it lies on the edge of the Everglades with its Ten Thousand Islands.  Fishing here is outstanding.

Big problem though, getting here was almost impossible.  In 1916 Florida began constructing a road to connect Tampa and Miami, called the Tamiami Trail (US41), but the lack of finances, WWI, and the impossible terrain of the Everglades, with it’s Mangrove Swamps, stopped them cold just south of Ft. Myers.  About this time, Barren Collier bought up 1.3 million acres of land that is now Everglades City, so it was in his interest that they get the Trail completed, thus he made a deal.  He would complete the road if they would create a new county encompassing his land. 

It pretty much bankrupted him, as the Trail was much more challenging than he figured.  Between the mangroves, the muck, and the limestone, he had his problems.  They built a rail and dredged a channel on one side of the planned road and dumped the dredging's onto the road bed to build it up. A slow and difficult process.  Eventually he got his county in 1923, but Florida had to complete the last 10 miles on the east and 13 miles to the south of Naples.  In 1929 the Tamiami Trail was completed, all 274 miles of it. 

Everglades City was a “planned city” meaning Collier laid out the roads and where important buildings were to be located; like City Hall, the Bank of the Everglades, a Community Church, Post Office, schools, and residential areas.  There is a traffic circle in the center of town. So as you drive through town, it has a very organized layout.  In addition, this was a “company town”. Collier owned everything and even paid workers with his own Everglades City script. The town served as housing and headquarters for work on the Trail.

The place was booming until Hurricane Donna in 1960.  It made a big mess and wiped out many of the homes and businesses.  It is still popular for vacationers and snowbirds.

City Hall

Bank of the Everglades

Community Church

It seems like it would be a very nice and quiet place to winter, but nothing to do but fishing (not all bad) and other water related recreation.  The nearest city of size is Naples, about 60 miles northwest.

The Tamiami Trail is Florida’s Route 66.  We have followed much of it in our travels the past few weeks. It connects a wide array of cities, landscapes, and things to see.  Considering it was built between 1915 and 1929, it is an amazing feat of road construction.  Today, I-75 has replaced it as the highway to Miami, but unlike Route 66, it is still active and vibrant.

Our last stop for the day is the Big Cypress Boardwalk in Fakahatchee Strand State Park.  The boardwalk is 0.6 miles, taking you right into a stand of really big cypress trees.  A cypress reminds you of cedar or arborvitae.  The needles are soft and they make cones that drop like a pine cone. Unlike an arborvitae or cedar, the cypress lose their needles in the winter.

    

Something we find interesting when looking at swamp plants is the survivor effect.  Banyan and Mangrove trees send out shoots and roots to continue their growth and multiply.  Cypress have knees to keep it stable in high water during the wet season here.  Epiphytes that  merely “sit” on other plants and live with water and air alone.  Then there are plants that end up killing the host as they grow.  This next picture shows this effect, where it actually strangled the tree it is attached to.

This is a Strangler Fig.  It starts out as an Epiphyte, but sends roots down to the ground.  Once the roots are established it begins to really grow.  To the point that it will encircle its host and strangle it.  This one was 50-60 feet tall, as tall as the tree it’s hooked to.

Well this concludes our visit to the northern half of the Everglades and Big Cypress.  We will be visiting the Everglades again, the southeastern half, when we get to Homestead.  Next we head for the Keys, our trip objective.  Stay tuned, got some neat stuff planned.