Today in Keys History – February 21, 2024
- Keys History Center
- Feb 20, 2024
- 2 min read
1906 – Stock Island was connected to Key West with a 12-foot-wide roadway on which the Florida East Coast Railroad would run. Filling to connect Boca Chica had commenced.
1918 – The motormen and conductors of the Key West Streetcar Company went on strike, demanding a 5 cents per hour raise.
1940 – John L. Lewis, head of the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations), spent the day at the Hotel Casa Marina. He arrived by boat from the Keys where he had been fishing with friends.
1950 – The Brunswick Deep Freeze Company announced it had hired 75 Key West women to aid in the processing of shrimp. Pay was between 75 cents and $1.25 an hour.
1967 – A sign stating, “On This Site: Key West’s Newest Motor Inn Opening Dec. 1967” became the first visible step toward the construction of a new motor lodge at the foot of Duval Street, which became the Pier House. Developer David Wolkowsky said the December date was only for the first 50 rooms of a planned 120-room facility.
1974 – A meeting between Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority and Monroe County commissioners revealed there would be no increase in water output for at least two years, until the FKAA could take over the Navy pipeline. The net effect was that construction of large, multi-family buildings would have to be halted.
1991 – Key West native Master Sergeant Eloy A. Rodriguez, a medic with the Army Special Forces, was killed in a helicopter crash in Saudi Arabia. He was the only local killed in the Gulf War.
Information compiled by Dr. Corey Malcom, Lead Historian, Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.
Image: The Pier House Motel at Front and Duval Streets in 1975. From the archives of Edwin O. Swift III. Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.