1848 – The new Key West Lighthouse on Whitehead Street was lighted for the first time. The lighthouse was built to replace the one destroyed by the Hurricane of 1846.
1913 – Two Key West stores – Holtsberg’s haberdashery and L.M. Goldstein’s department store – were destroyed by fire. The buildings were at 602 and 604 Duval Street.
1928 – A woman died when she crashed her car at Islamorada on Matecumbe Key, becoming the first fatality on the two-week-old Overseas Highway.
1928 – Joe Powers, self-proclaimed world champion flagpole sitter, climbed the pole at the La Concha Hotel and promised to sit atop it for one week.
1954 – After completing structural surveys, the Florida Road Department greenlighted 2,000 feet of fishing catwalks to be attached to Keys bridges between Boca Chica and Whale Harbor.
1961 – The Navy announced that it had named one of its new streets in the Sigsbee Park Housing for Stephen R. Mallory. Mallory, who was from Key West, served as U.S. Senator from Florida in the 1850’s and during the Civil War was Secretary of the Navy of the Confederate States.
1967 – State beverage agents paid surprise visits to the Moose, VFW, American Legion, and Elks clubs in Key Largo, Marathon, and Key West, and they found on many of the premises “various kinds of gambling equipment, raffles, and lotteries,” contrary to the liquor laws.
1974 – As a counter to popular “No Hi-Rises On The Keys” bumper stickers, many Monroe County contractors were sporting their own “When The Building Stops, I’ll Go On Welfare” decals.
2009 – Staff at Bahia Honda State Park began trapping iguanas in a bid to eliminate them from the area. The invasive reptiles were eating large swaths of thorny nickerbean plants upon which critically endangered Miami blue butterflies hatch and feed.
Information compiled by Dr. Corey Malcom, Lead Historian, Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.
Image: Fishing catwalk on a bridge of the Overseas Highway C 1960s. Photo by Don Pinder. Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.