Long Key (Monroe County, Florida)
| Long key | ||
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| Waters | Gulf of Mexico | |
| Archipelago | Florida Keys | |
| Geographical location | 24 ° 49 ′ 11 ″ N , 80 ° 49 ′ 18 ″ W | |
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| length | 6.5 km | |
| Residents | 184 (2010) | |
| main place | Layton | |
Long Key is an island in the Florida Keys off the coast of the US state Florida . The island is about 18 km southwest of Islamorada and is connected to the mainland via the Overseas Highway .
geography
The island belongs to the middle Florida Keys, consists of dead corals and blown sand and is a maximum of three meters above sea level. Much of the island is only slightly above sea level and is regularly flooded, in the interior of the island there are mangroves and a number of lagoons .
history
The island was called Cayo Vivora ( German Viper Island ) on old Spanish maps because its shape is reminiscent of a snake with open jaws, and was therefore also called Rattlesnake Key in the past . In 1864 it was referred to as Long Island on a map . In 1845 the island fell to the US Department of War as a military site . Between 1880 and 1885, private individuals acquired large parts of the island and planted coconut palm plantations at the southwest end . In 1905 the construction of the Key West extension of Henry Flagler's Florida East Coast Railway reached the island. At that time, the name Long Key caught on because the bridge leading to Conch Key to the southwest was the longest bridge on the railway line at the time. On October 17, 1906, a hurricane hit the island. A houseboat with over 150 workers on board tore itself from its anchorage and sank, only 83 workers could be saved.
The railway line was finally completed in 1912 and opened up the island to tourists. On the island, Flagler founded the Long Key Fishing Camp , a luxury fishing resort for deep-sea fishermen, as early as 1908 . Writer Zane Gray made the resort famous, so celebrity guests such as Herbert Hoover , Franklin Roosevelt , Andrew Mellon , William Hearst and Charles Kettering followed. The resort even had its own narrow-gauge railway for its guests until it was destroyed by the Labor Day hurricane in 1935.
Mary and Del Layton , a grocer couple from Miami , bought over 16 hectares of land on the island after World War II and set up a fishing camp there. They gradually expanded the facility, called Layton's Long Key Fishing Camp , to include residential cabins and a restaurant, until the facility opened in the new town of Layton on September 18, 1963 .
On October 1, 1969, Long Key State Park was established, which today takes up most of the island and has a popular campground.