1825 – Solomon Snyder, a New York native, resident of Key Vaca, and Spanish Vice Consul for Florida, died at Indian Key.
1878 – A hurricane that claimed hundreds of lives in Cuba and Haiti passed over the Middle Keys on a due north course that took it over the Everglades.
1893 – Jefferson B. Browne was appointed Collector of Custom for the Port of Key West.
1899 – Key West had 77 cases of yellow fever, with seven deaths on this date.
1909 – J.W. Johnson went to Big Coppitt Key to begin laying 13,200 feet of streets for a new development to be named Johnsonville. The new “suburb” would be linked with a railroad station to be placed on the island.
1917 – Juan Farto, proprietor of the Victoria restaurant, purchased the property at the corner of Duval and Greene Streets where the restaurant stood. The purchase price was $7,800.
1935 – Nearly a week after the Labor Day hurricane, rescuers reached the mainland Monroe County fishing and farming community of Cape Sable via seaplane. All signs of the settlement were gone. Four men were found in a boat, and they said they had tied themselves and their families to trees to survive.
1983 – Jennie Bethel deBoer died at the age of 97. She grew up at the Key West Lighthouse, where her father William Bethel was the keeper for 25 years. During World War I she served in the Navy as a Yoemanette. After the war she worked for The Key West Citizen for 35 years.
2007 – Two Big Pine Key men were sentenced to six months in jail after they pled guilty to shooting and bludgeoning an alligator to death at the island’s Blue Hole wildlife preserve.
Information compiled by Tom Hambright, Historian Emeritus, and Dr. Corey Malcom, Lead Historian, Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.
Image: The Victoria Restaurant at 201 Duval Street under construction in 1917. Wright Langley Collection. Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.