I was done writing about the Great Florida Keys Road Trip when Mile Marker 0 came out in August. I need to save some of the stories for the book, right? But then, I received a letter.
A gentleman wrote, “Flagler should have built the bridge to Cuba, then we could have kept your columns going.”
A sucker for a personal letter sent to the newspaper and forwarded to my home address, the Great Florida Keys Road Trip is returning to the Lower Keys and trekking across Ramrod Key and the Niles Channel Bridge.
Ramrod is a small island tucked between the Torch and Summerland Keys. In my imagination, if the Torch Keys were a pea pod, Ramrod Key would be a pea that fell out of the pod but didn’t roll too far away — a big pea, though. It was called Roberts Island on DeBrahm’s 1772 chart. The modern name is the result of a ship named Ramrod wrecking just south of the island in the 19th century.
Shortly after driving onto the island, the Looe Key Dive Resort appears on the south/ocean side of the road. The big visual marker is a large tiki hut. Underneath the dried, brown palm fronds is a bar. Looe Key refers to a shallow offshore reef. It is one of the top snorkeling sites in the Keys. The inner reef line developed about 5.5 miles offshore of Ramrod Key in water ranging from around 6 to 30 feet in depth. Charter boats from Bahia Honda to Ramrod Key visit the reef twice daily, weather permitting.
Why is there a reef called Looe Key? The story of Captain Utting and the HMS Looe sheds light on the reason. It was early February 1744 when the 44-gun HMS Looe began navigating the dangerous Straits of Florida. In the late evening hours of Feb. 3, the crew was dropping sounding leads every 30 minutes to confirm the ocean’s depth. Around midnight, after several measurements recorded a depth of several hundred feet, Captain Utting retired to his cabin below deck. A short time later, under the light of the moon, the men on watch saw waves breaking over a shallow reef.
Alarms were sounded; evasive actions taken. The Looe’s rudder struck the reef, broke off and the ship, unable to steer, was pounded by swells and beaten against the coral beds. The ship was taking on water. Captain Utting and 274 sailors escaped to a nearby spit of land. Utting described it in his records: “a small beach of an islet was approximately 300 yards long and 100 yards wide.”
The small stretch of land became known as Looe Key. However, it has since disappeared, and today the shallow coral reefs are recognized as Looe Key. Since 1985, it has been home to one of the more offbeat Florida Keys events, the Looe Key Underwater Music Festival. Bill Becker, a former disc jockey and news director at US1 Radio, 104.1 FM, and Dr. Fred Troxel conceived the event. Scuba divers and snorkelers are invited out to the reef to swim with the fish, explore the corals and listen to music broadcast through a series of strategically placed underwater Lubell System speakers.
It has occurred on the first Saturday after the Fourth of July every year since. In addition to Buffett tunes, reggae and the Beatles’ “Octopus’s Garden,” recorded public service announcements from the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary promoting diver etiquette and coral reef awareness are played. Whether it is the first Saturday after the Fourth of July or some other day, Looe Key is an excellent snorkeling destination.
For a little fun on dry land, just a little bit down the highway is Boondocks. A big tiki hut covers a bar there, too. While a tiki bar in the Florida Keys is nothing unusual, this one also features a miniature golf course.
It is not long before Ramrod Key ends, and the Niles Channel Bridge begins. The bridge crosses Niles Channel, named for the Niles family. Garibaldi Niles made a homestead claim to land on Summerland Key on April 1, 1892. The family farmed chickens and livestock. A real estate developer bought the Niles homestead in the 1940s and turned the old farmland into a residential community. You can see those houses as you approach Summerland Key.
Next to the automobile bridge, on the ocean side, is the old Henry Flagler railroad bridge. People like to fish from the old bridges. At almost a half-mile, it was the longest of the bridges in the Lower Keys. When Henry Flagler rolled down to Key West on Jan. 22, 1912, the bridge had yet to be completed.
Because Flagler was in poor health, several temporary bridges had been established to ensure he could experience the trip to Key West. When Flagler arrived in his private railcar at the Key West terminus, it wasn’t just the Niles Channel Viaduct that hadn’t been finished.
Flagler’s personal railcar traveled across a series of temporary bridges, including those connecting Lower Matecumbe Key to Long Key. The Channel 2 and Channel 5 bridges were wooden trestle bridges during Flagler’s trek. In 1913, they were replaced with concrete viaducts. The Channel 5 Bridge was also fitted with a Bascule drawbridge to enable boats to navigate the channel.
The Long Key Viaduct had 1,512 feet of temporary wooden trestles allowing Flagler to cross. They were replaced with the last 35 concrete arches necessary to complete the 1.72-mile Long Key Viaduct.
In the Lower Keys, the wooden trestle bridges at Little Duck Key, Missouri Key and Ohio Key were replaced by spandrel arch bridges in 1914. The permanent bridge connecting Ohio Key to Bahia Honda was completed in 1914, too. The temporary bridge connecting Torch Key to Ramrod Key and the one crossing Kemp Channel between Summerland Key and Cudjoe Key were replaced with permanent bridges in 1915.
At about one-half mile long, the Niles Channel Viaduct was the longest of the bridges in the Lower Keys. Work to convert the bridge to a permanent viaduct was completed in November 1915. It was the last of the permanent railroad bridges completed. Henry Flagler died on May 20, 1913.
Next stop: Summerland Key.
