54 days to go. It's been 10 days since I wrote in here, sorry about that, I've been traveling and sort of busy!
So where were we? Right, we had just left Anne's Beach on Lower Matecumbe Key and crossed the Channel #2 bridge just past MM 73 (bridge #10). When Henry Flagler was constructing the Overseas Railroad in this area, he encountered the second longest stretch of open water that needed to be bridged - nearly four miles from the tip of Lower Matecumbe to Long Key. The water in this area, though, is mostly shallow, and Flagler set out doing what he did best after building railroads - building land. About halfway between Lower Matecumbe and Long Key and just south of the straight line route between them is a shallow flat that Flagler immediately set to filling. This area is today just south of MM 72 and is the southwestern half of what is now one big island called Craig Key. The two bayside island appendages prior to MM 72 did not come until much later. Craig Key was unique at the time as the railroad was double-tracked at this point and even three-wide in one place. This created a wider-than-normal fill, which left a lot of land (relatively) to be built on after the hurricane destroyed the railroad. The waters on either side of Craig Key remained open as they were deepwater channels difficult to fill. These are Channel #2 and Channel #5. No one seems to know what happened to Channels 1, 3 and 4.
Following the opening of the railroad in 1912, Craig Key was the location of maintenance and construction facilities to maintain and support the railroad. A deepwater dock was constructed and likely a small fishing camp. By the 1920's, Craig Key became a popular location for fishing charters out of Miami complete with a train station and the aforementioned dock. In the early 1930's, after the completion of the railroad and before its destruction, much of the island was leased from the railroad by a Captain R. W. Craig - a lease that was honored by the state highway department after the hurricane destroyed the railroad and the island reverted to the highway department when it acquired the railroad right-of-way. By the mid-1930's, the island sported a hotel, a post office and a small town with a population between 20 and 30. Still populated in the 1950's, the two additional islands north of the fill were constructed and joined to the main fill.
Today, nearly all of the original settlement at Craig has been destroyed by the expansion and widening of the highway. A few houses remain on the two small islands constructed in the 1950's, but little else exists there now.
Leaving Craig Key, cross Channel #5 (bridge #11, MM 71) to the fill leading to Fiesta Key. The Channel #5 bridge is a spectacularly high span, nearly a mile long, that will provide you sweeping vistas in every direction. If you did not already feel like you were driving across the sea, it's around here that you probably will.
From here, you'll enter a contiguous piece of land from Fiesta Key to Long Key. Originally, the railroad completely bypassed Fiesta Key (then known as Jewfish Key and later Jewfish Bush Key), running just to its south. The first Overseas Highway, opened in 1928, crossed this section of the Keys on the ferry from Lower Matecumbe to No Name Key. With the railroad to the south, and the ferry to the north, little happened on Jewfish Key. When the Bonus Army arrived in the Keys to construct the roadway from Lower Matecumbe Key to begin replacing the ferry, work began on a road from Lower Matecumbe to Long Key, starting with a bridge from Lower Matecumbe to Jewfish Key. This is the bridge of which nothing remains but eight concrete pilings and a small fill off of MM 73.
With the destruction of the railroad, this project was abandoned and the railroad right-of-way repurposed for the road. As more and more fill was dredged up and more and more land constructed, Jewfish Key eventually became connected to the roadway. By the mid-1940's, bus service had been established to Key West by Florida Motor Lines, later acquired by Greyhound. Fans of Humphrey Bogart will recognize Florida Motor Lines as the bus ridden by Major Frank McCloud at the beginning of the 1948 Bogart/Bacall film "Key Largo".
Greyhound set about building a rest stop and restaurant on Jewfish Bush Key. This was an enormously popular stop for a while with dozens of busses a day carrying military personnel back and forth to Key West. By the early 1950's, a post office was constructed and the island rechristened "Greyhound Key". By 1966, bus traffic had fallen off and Greyhound sold the island to KOA Kampgrounds of America who once again renamed the island, this time to Fiesta Key. The island remained a KOA until it was sold in 2006 to a developer of luxury vacation homes. The KOA closed in 2007, but the luxury homes never materialized and the property changed hands several times since. It's currently a sad and run-down RV park. Avoid the turnoff here and continue on to Long Key.
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