Southern Style: A Visit to Islamorada

The weather forecast for the end of this week predicted gusty winds and cooler temperatures. We thought this might be a good opportunity to get a rental car and explore a little farther up the keys. We picked Islamorada for a day trip.

Islamorada or the Village of Islands was incorporated in 1997 and is comprised of Plantation Key, Windley Key, Upper Matecumbe Key, and Lower Matecumbe Key. Rumor has it that the area might qualify for the largest fishing fleet per square mile in the world. I can not speak to that, however there are a lot of fishing charters and tournaments hosted in Islamorada every year.

Keith and I started at the Florida Keys History and Discovery Center. This building is on the property of the Islander Resort. We had a nice bonus when checking into the museum. It seems they were having an art exhibit day and admission to the museum as well as the art exhibit was free for the day.

Florida Keys History and Discovery Center

This is a very nice museum with interactive displays as well as a theater that shows several informative films throughout the day.

Some of the displays in the museum

Keith and I watched both a film on the building of Henry Flagler's Overseas Railroad and one about the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935.

The theater with movie playing about the Florida East Coast Railroad

Lionfish on display in the museum's aquarium

Lionfish is an invasive species that was introduced to the coastal waters of southern Florida about 30 years ago. It is believed that they came from an aquarium release of some kind. Often referred to as the worst marine invasion to date, lionfish consume a wide variety of economically and ecologically important fish and invertebrates. They also have no known predators in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, resulting in their population growing quickly and damaging native species population dynamics. People are encouraged to remove any and every lionfish they encounter in the waters here. This fish does have venomous spines that can cause painful wounds. The spines can be removed with a scissors to avoid the sting, and then the fish is filleted as with any other fish and the meat can be eaten. I can say it is quite tasty as I did my part by having a lionfish sushi roll just the other night.

My "King of the Jungle" Sushi Roll from Castaway's

Below is a picture of the anchor from the Spanish galleon "San Pedro" outside the discovery museum. This ship sank in a 1733 hurricane bringing gold and silver back to Spain from Havana. It is now part of the San Pedro Underwater Archaeological Preserve State Park. Visitors can snorkel and dive the site which is also on the National Register of Historic Places.

After the discovery center, we went just 3 miles north up the highway to Windley Key and the Windley Key Fossil Reef Geological Park. Windley Key was an ancient ocean reef. It is estimated that 100,000 years ago ocean levels were higher and covered the Florida keys. When the ocean waters receded, the corals became fossilized limestone over time. In the early 1900's, Henry Flagler purchased an area to quarry the fossilized coral for use in building his Florida East Coast Railroad. The quarry was active until the 1960's and the stone became well known and sought after. Called Keystone, this decorative limestone was used in buildings such as churches in New York City, buildings in St Louis and other large cities, as well as private homes around the country. The site is now a Florida state park where visitors can walk through the quarry and adjacent hammock. Some of the main coral species in the limestone are star coral, porous coral, and brain corals.

Windley Key Fossil and Geological Park

Pengi exploring the fossil park, sitting on fossilized coral.

Machine used to cut the limestone.

Fresh water is very scarce in the keys and trees must take extreme measures in attempts to search out fresh water, particularly around the limestone.

Trail through the hammock

Cool close-up of the Gumbo limbo tree bark.

The locals call this the "Tourist Tree", since it it red and peeling... like tourists.

All the little tubes sticking up are roots from the Black Mangrove bushes, called "snorkel roots". They grow these shoots upwards out of the saltwater swamp so the mangrove can breath.

A Fan Coral Fossils visible in the limestone

All the exploring made us hungry for lunch, so we stopped at a local grill for some grub.

Wahoo's Bar and Grill

The view was pretty nice from our spot at the bar.

As we headed back down the islands of Islamorada, we pulled in to take a look at the Monument dedicated to the victims of the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane. This memorial was erected in 1937 to honor and remember the victims of the September 2, 1935 hurricane that decimated the area around Islamorada. In the early 1930's hundreds of WWI veterans seeking employment through FDR's New Deal, came to the area to build bridges and roadway along the old East Coast Railroad route. Employee camps were located all along the keys when the Category 5 Labor Day Hurricane struck Islamorada the late afternoon of September 2, 1935. This hurricane was the most intense tropical storm to ever make landfall in the Western Hemisphere in both pressure and wind speed. Wind speeds reached 185-200 mph and the barometric pressure fell to 26.35 inches. A storm surge of 17-18 feet swept over the low lying islands and the Islamorada area was essentially obliterated. Nearly 700 people lost their lives to the storm, some being washed as far as 40 miles to the southwestern tip of mainland Florida near Naples. Many of the dead were the veterans stationed at camps working construction on the roadway. The train that had been sent from Miami to evacuate them did not arrive until just before the storm, and could not get them off the keys. The train itself was derailed in the storm and a major part of the Overseas Railway was destroyed in the storm as well.

Hurricane Monument