The lounge in the WAVE barracks at the Army Barracks Key West on June 3, 1945. U.S. Navy Photo from the Wright Langley Collection.
1905 – The new Chamber of Commerce met and elected its first officers. They were W.D. Cash, president; G.W. Allen, vice president; G.S. Watts, second vice president and E.M. Martin, secretary and treasurer.
1926 – Ruth Bryan Owen, daughter of William Jennings Bryan, spoke at Bayview Park in Key West as part of her campaign to represent Florida’s 4th congressional district, which ran along the state’s east coast from Jacksonville through the Florida Keys.
1928 – The Key West High School boy’s baseball team beat the Marines 24 to 11 in a game at the Navy yard.
1929 – Florida Motor Lines was planning an intensive advertising campaign throughout Florida to make Key West the tourist mecca of the state.
1943 – Mary Frances Smith, Key West’s first member of the Navy’s WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Service), was at Hunter College in New York undergoing her indoctrination training.
1945 – The Everglades National Wildlife Refuge was established, much of it encompassing mainland Monroe County.
1946 – Key West Police Officer Jose Valdez was shot and killed at 322 Mickens Lane by Cora Lee Stanley when she wrestled his service pistol from him and used it against him.
1967 – The Florida Keys Aqueduct Commissioners were present as the first fresh water flowed from the new desalination plant. The $3.3 million desalting plant-produced 2.62 million gallons of fresh water a day and ended a critical water shortage.
1971 – Florida Secretary of State Richard Stone announced that Fort Taylor and Key West Armory had been placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
1980 – A one-day record of 5,117 Cuban Refugees arrived from the port of Mariel.
Information compiled by Tom Hambright, Historian Emeritus, and Dr. Corey Malcom, Lead Historian, Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.
Image: The lounge in the WAVE barracks at the Army Barracks Key West on June 3, 1945. U.S. Navy Photo from the Wright Langley Collection. Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.