1908 – Recordings of speeches by presidential candidates Wm. H. Taft and Wm. J. Bryan could be heard at Stowers Music House on Duval Street. “While listening to them, one can fancy that the speaker himself is present,” wrote an attendee.
1932 – The Post Office opened for business in the new Federal Building on Simonton Street, at the corner of Caroline Street.
1966 – City officials and backers held a ground-breaking ceremony for the new Key West Theater in the Sears Town Shopping Center.
1974 – Members of the Key West Fire Department began moving into the new station at the corner of Kennedy Drive and Flagler Avenue.
1999 – The Commerce Department declared a fishery disaster for spiny lobster and stone crab fishermen in the Florida Keys because of uninsurable losses from 1998’s Hurricane Georges. In that storm, over 400,000 traps were lost, and harvest was persistently reduced.
2004 – Federal, state, and local law officials arrested 51 people from Key West to Big Pine Key for cocaine trafficking. The sting, dubbed “Operation Cracked Conch,” targeted three loosely knit cocaine-dealing networks and was one of the largest drug busts in Keys history.
Information compiled by Dr. Corey Malcom, Lead Historian, Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.
Image: Wolfson Shoes and the J. L. Stowers Music House at 424 Duval Street, ca. 1910. Wright Langley Collection. Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.