To the Bat Tower Robin!!

Mile 16.8 - Sugarloaf Key (nee Perky Key)
- Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Sugarloaf Key was named for the Sugar Loaf pineapple grown there many years ago. In the late 1800s there was a sponger settlement on the Florida Bay side. In the 1920s, Richter Clyde Perky (after whom Sugarloaf was named at that time) developed the Key with a fishing and gambling lodge which was quite popular at that time. Mr. Perky also made an unsuccessful attempt to combat the horrendous mosquito problem using bats. He built a tall cypress tower with a louvered walls fashioned after similar structures in Texas. The hope was that bats would roost in this tower and prey on the mosquito population. Unfortunately, bats never showed up, the affair was deemed "Perky's Folly," and shortly thereafter, his business and his health declined, and he died. The bat tower is still standing.



My Mom and Dad came to Sugarloaf Key in 1966. I have a picture of them staying at the Sugarloaf Lodge watching a dolphin show in the lodge's lagoon. I'll have to see if I can find it. The dophin's name, is fittingly enough, "Sugar".



Mile 30.5 - Big Pine Key
- Thursday, December 6, 2007

The National Key Deer Refuge is home to the endangered tiny Key Deer. This deer, no larger than a mid-size dog, roams freely here. The shoulder height of Key Deer is between 24-32 inches. Does weigh 45 to 65 pounds while bucks weigh 55 to 80 pounds.





Also found on Long Key is "The Blue Hole", an old rock quarry, used for construction of Henry Flagler's Florida East Coast Railway, and now provides a freshwater habitat for alligators and wading birds like the Egret.



Henry Flagler is a huge name in Florida and in the Florida Keys.

Henry Morrison Flagler was born on January 2, 1830 in Hopewell, New York. He was a business partner with John D. Rockefeller and made tons of money (as did Mr. Rockefeller) owning part of Standard Oil which eventually became Exxon (Standard Oil -> Esso -> Exxon) and not Sunoco, *the offical fuel* of Nascar.

Flagler recognized Florida's potential to attract out-of-state visitors. Though Flagler remained on the Board of Directors of Standard Oil, he gave up his day-to-day involvement in the corporation in order to pursue his interests in Florida. In 1885, he constructed the 540-room Hotel Ponce de Leon in St. Augustine.

Realizing the need for a sound transportation system to support his hotel ventures, Flagler purchased the Jacksonville, St. Augustine & Halifax Railroad, the first railroad in what would eventually become the Florida East Coast Railway. It is this railroad that opened up the Florida "gold coast" for "development", from Jacksonville to Miami. In fact, Flagler basically founded the cities of St Augustine, Fort Lauderdale and Miami.



Flagler decided that his Florida East Coast Railway should be extended from Biscayne Bay (Miami) to Key West, a point 128 miles past the end of the Florida peninsula in 1905. At the time, Key West was Florida's most populated city and it was also the United States' closest deep water port to the canal that the U.S. government proposed to build in Panama.

Flagler wanted to take advantage of additional trade with Cuba and Latin America as well as the increased trade with the west that the Panama Canal was expected to bring. In 1912, the Florida Over-Sea Railroad was completed to Key West.

More on the Over-Sea Railroad as the virtual walk progresses since some of where I will be walking is rail-trail, railroad bridges converted into fishing piers and even spectacular bridges to nowhere.





Thanks LadyStyx for the idea: