Blowing Through the Lower Florida Keys — Page 2
Story and photos by Tim Leffel



No Name Pub Florida Keys

We hit the nearby No Name Pub for a drink afterwards, trying to fathom how much money with notes written on it is stuck to the walls and ceiling of this place. "We got about three feet of water in here when Irma hit," says the bartender. "But it didn't really get up to where the bills are." She estimates there may be a hundred thousand bucks in cash among the layers when we ask the inevitable question, but nobody really knows. A customer who gets a different bartender the next day may well get an estimate that's half, or twice as much.

Square Groupers and a Missing Beach

We arrive at Parmer's Resort on Little Torch Key for the evening and immediately love the island vibe. The place has bocce ball, cornhole, hammocks, grills and a nice pool with lounge chairs. They give us cookies when we check in.

We head to The Square Grouper for dinner and I'm glad the menu explains the name. It's a slang term for the bales of weed that would wash up in the days of heavy marijuana smuggling in the 1970s and '80s. At one point U.S. Customs reported that 87% of the weed seized in the USA was seized in Florida. Sometimes those bales had to be bailed out on the run and they would wash ashore.

Like pot itself, the Square Grouper Bar & Grill on Cudjoe Key has grown up and gotten respectable. It's a fine dining establishment now, not some rastaman joint serving up munchies. Full of items like eggplant, portobello mushrooms, and jasmine rice bowls, the menu still has plenty of the requisite fresh seafood and gourmet burgers. We're pleasantly surprised to find such a flair of presentation and flavors on our plates from chef-owner Lynn Bell, but in a way it's a reflection of the reality of who the Keys residents really are. Everywhere we go, the hurricane stories are followed by a connected story: not enough housing for the working class. There's plenty of work in the area, especially in a period of rebuilding, but finding an inexpensive place to live is a challenge that many don't find a way to overcome in this paradise by the sea. So they move away, leaving the islands to the leisure class and retirees.

In daytime we make our way to 524-acre Bahia Honda State Park, a protected island since 1961. The park has long been known for its stupendous miles-long white-sand beach, sometimes cited as one of the best in the country. We're guided by signs to a small secondary beach facing west though because the main one is just...gone. It's like a vacuum cleaner came in and sucked away all its sand. That whole side of the island is fenced off so it can recover for another year at least. Here Mother Nature is showing her Shiva side: hurricane destruction followed by creation anew, both from the same source. From the other beach we can see the old and new bridges that brought people to the area originally. The modern Seven Mile Bridge starts at Marathon Key and crosses several smaller islands. The original bridge, however, was a miracle bringing passengers by train.

Bahia Honda State Park Flagler railroad

"Flagler's Folly" Linking Miami and Key West

The name Henry Flagler may not be as well-known as other American business tycoons such as Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Vanderbilt, but he is the self-made man most responsible for turning Florida into a tourism destination. This Midwesterner with an 8th-grade education first saw Florida with his wife when her doctor had prescribed a trip south for her tuberculosis. At this point he was working for Rockefeller's Standard Oil and making good money. The railroads were a mess, post-Civil War, and the hotel choices were slim. He smelled opportunity and came back again on his second marriage, after his first wife died, and built a hotel in St. Augustine.

He then bought a railroad when he was having trouble getting his supplies, expanding to ship oranges and pineapples north and bringing people south. He purchased or was given land on the rail routes and would always build a hospital, a school, and a church where his depots went in. More people started moving to the state, which fueled the cycle of growth. In the late 1800s he connected the whole eastern seaboard of Florida and launched resort areas along the Atlantic coast of the Sunshine State—including Daytona and Palm Beach.

His most ambitious project was derided by most as an impossible dream and a giant waste of money: building a set of railway bridges to connect prosperous Key West to the mainland of Florida at Miami—a city that only had around 500 inhabitants and no port when he proposed the connection. (At the time, Key West had 20,000 people.)

We get a taste of what it was like to undertake his 123-mile railroad across the islands when we take a boat from Marathon Key to small Pigeon Key, where more than 400 of the railroad workers lived. The railroad bridge cuts right across the island and the workers would strike out from here to their job sites. They got $1.50 a day, room and board, and free medical care, plus transportation home if they finished their contract. This crew and the others along the route ended up finishing the whole project in seven years, perhaps in part to Flagler's strict no-alcohol policy.

Flagler Railroad Pigeon Key Florida

Flagler's miracle railroad—which he financed all out of his own pocket—was a big success after it opened in 1912, but only for 23 years. The age of the automobile was coming, but there was no road to compete with yet. What really did it in was more sudden: the great "Labor Day Hurricane" of 1935, a category 5 storm that destroyed more than 40 miles of track. The company sold its assets to the state of Florida, which eventually rebuilt the bridges for cars instead.

So 2017's Hurricane Irma was just another mean storm in a long line of them through history in these islands, little jewels at the end of a peninsula jutting into the warm Gulf of Mexico. There have only been 18 hurricane seasons since 1851 without a major storm in the state of Florida. As we see new roofs going on houses on our drive back to catch the ferry home, it seems any plan of permanence has a bit of folly to it here. Yet the horseshoe crabs, the mangroves, and old gingerbread houses of Key West live on.

Key West Express

If You Go:
Check out the Fla-Keys.com website for ideas on what to explore on the whole string of islands. Take the Key West Express from Fort Myers or Marco Island to cut out a lot of driving or catch one of the frequent flights. The local Conch Tour Train (really a trolley bus) offers a great overview of Key West with some history and trivia. Then to visit other islands you can rent a car near the airport in Key West, which is not far from the center. See my reviews of two places to stay: Chelsea House and Parmer's Resort.



Editor Tim Leffel splits his time between Guanajuato, Mexico and Tampa, Florida. He is the author of five travel books, including A Better Life for Half the Priceand Travel Writing 2.0. He has run the Cheapest Destinations Blog since 2003.


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Related Features:

Kayaking the Calusa Blueway in Florida - Tim Leffel
Rock, Paper, Cod - Amy Rosen
Diving Into Art in the Land of NASCAR - Tim Leffel
Exploring My Pilgrim Past at Plymouth - Becky Garrison



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