Records of some of the first (44) settlers to No Name Key date back to 1870, while its’ larger neighbor, Big Pine Key, had only one (1) settler recorded.Fishing and salvaging were most likely the primary occupations of the earliest settlers.
No Name Key has a rich and colorful history dating back to the early 1900s.From 1928 until 1938 No Name key was the landing site for the Ferry, which resulted in the growth of a small community. This ferry was the only method of automobile transport between the Upper Keys (Lower Matacumbe Key) and the Lower Keys (No Name Key), as no road existed in between. The trip from Miami to Key West took 8 hours; four of these hours were spent on a the ferry crossing the 40-miles of water between Lower Matecumbe Key and No Name Key. The three ferries in service could carry 21 cars each, and had a restaurant and lounge topside. It was not unusual for trips to be delayed when ferries ran aground in the shallow waters.The ferry operated until 1938 when the Overseas Highway was completed on March 29, making it possible to drive all the way to Key West.
Old Ferry Landing on No Name Key
HEMINGWAY VISITED NO NAME KEY: From the 1972 biography of Ernest Hemingway, James McLendon:
"Hemingway had been in Key West for about a week when he drove north for an afternoon of fishing. There was surely no shortage of places to fish in Key West. It is likely that the author, like so many of us who’ve come to the Keys from someplace else, wanted to explore, to discover what lay around every bend in the road and to see what there was to see from every dock.
Hemingway drove north as far as the road went, to No Name Key. He was fishing off the dock next to the ferry terminal when he happened to meet “Georgie” Brooks, the State Attorney for the Keys. Brooks was sitting in his car, waiting for the ferry that would take him to Lower Matecumbe, as McLendon tells it, when he struck up a conversation with Hemingway. Hemingway asked Brooks if he knew anyone who had a boat and could take him fishing. Brooks told him to go see Charles Thompson at Thompson Hardware Store on Caroline Street in Key West. Hemingway went by the store later that day, and by the evening of the following day, the two men were on a boat, fishing."
Infamous to the islands history, it was the training and staging grounds (mostly CIA trained American soldiers of fortune) of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion (April 1961).It is reported that No Name Key was owned by Howard Hughes at the time. See:www.latinamericanstudies.org/cuba/masferrer.htm(this has not been substantiated by this webmaster).
Additionally, No Name Key was the principal training site for the Intercontinental Penetration Force (“Interpen”). Interpen - IAB (again, reportedly CIA funded) was established in March of 1961 by Gerry Patrick Hemming. Interpen consisted of a group of freelance volunteer instructors training anti-Castro forces for raids on Cuba totally unrelated to the Bay of Pigs. The Miami Herald, December 5, 1962 http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/belligerence/12-5-62.htm
The No Name Key of today was "re-settled" in 1969, with the arrival of Bob & Ruth Eaken, and their two young children. The Eaken family developed and re-established the East End of No Name Key; while other early families, such as the Craig's and the Schlew's re-established the Bahia Shores/Dolphin Harbour subdivion. More than 30 years later, water pipes and valves in the streets still await the arrival of (FKAA) public water.
Today’s No Name Key is a quaint island, home to: One small fishing camp, Two rock quarries, Forty-three homes (more than half of which are second home/winter residents), and a Hundred Florida Key Deer.
We hope you enjoy your visit to No Name Key and enjoy viewing our Key Deer.
~Please leave nothing behind but good will: Don’t Litter!
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