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Key Largo South Map

History of South Key Largo

02 Jul
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I’m going back to the Keys soon where I love to fish and visit the many waterfront resorts and restaurants where local seafood is served. The water is clear and clean, snorkeling on the coral reef is excellent! There’s also a lot of history which is detailed in our book The Florida Keys, A History Through Maps which was featured in the Miami Herald and on the cover of Florida Weekly, Naples Illustrated and Spotlight magazine. Here’s a few historical highlights for Key Largo. As with all the Keys, the native Calusa and Tequesta Indian tribes controlled the territory in Key Largo which made life difficult for early explorers. Spanish sailors and those of other countries would have been the first to land in the area in search of gold, silver, slaves and other things of value.  Unfortunately for them and any shipwreck survivors, they themselves were often slaughtered or enslaved and then traded back to Spain, if they were lucky!  The last of the Calusa left the Keys for Cuba around 1763 as England took over Florida. They’d formed alliances with the Spanish and spoke their language but still struggled. Arrival of the British was the last straw and they were re-settled outside of Havana where thier bloodline was continued, as recorded in Spanish church records. Early settlement of Key Largo was slow and anyone there prior to 1840, when the Seminole Indians were attacking, likely left. An 1850 census of the Keys noted only one family on Key Largo. Pineapple farming became profitable later in the 1800s and more settlers came but the transport of goods still depended on sailing boats to Key West and growth was erratic. Construction of the Florida East Coast Railway came to Key Largo around 1905 through thick tropical hammocks, rock outcropping, swamps and small waterways. Key Largo had some of the highest ground in the entire Keys chain and when Flagler’s engineers arrived they started quarries to provide rock and fill for the rail bed. The forest here was different from anything they’d encountered in other parts of Florida; tropical hardwood hammock trees like gumbo limbo, poisonwood and manchineel (also poisonous) were common. Rattlesnakes, coral snakes, crocodiles, alligators, clouds of mosquitoes, hurricanes and other surprises challenged the railroad men until the track to Key West was completed in 1912. The same road bed as the railway survives today under many areas of the Overseas Highway. The Highway arrived from Miami in the 1920s but wasn’t completed to Key West until 1938. The road brought more tourists and prosperity to the Keys, and also land speculators and developers. Popular demand for waterfront housing and boating access drove the construction of communities by dredging the mangroves and shallow sea bottoms. The rock and sand dredged up was used to create dry land and the Keys waterfront you see today. These practices are no longer allowed today which makes waterfront property a precious commodity. There is much to see in Key Largo both onshore and offshore where Pennekamp Coral Reef Start Park is a national treasure, the only living reef of it’s kind in America. If you’ve never seen the wonders of a coral reef, this is good place to start even if you’ve never snorkeled before! To learn more about history of Key Largo and other islands in the Florida Keys, check out The Florida Keys a History Through Maps. The book can be purchased online on this website. For all questions, please call us at 239-963-3497 or visit our website.
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Categories: Book Blog

New Article Published in Spotlight Magazine

01 Jul
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Spotlight Article on The Florida Keys a History Through MapsJuly 1,2020- A new article has been published in Spotlight Magazine on The Florida Keys A History Through Maps book. Spotlight News Magazine published an article in their July issue highlighting The Florida Keys A History Through Maps and author Todd Turrell. Pick up a copy near you or read it online here. Thank you Spotlight and author Don Manley for featuring us in such a great article! Be sure to stay up to date on other news along with our weekly blog featuring snippets from all of our books! For more information on The Florida Keys A History Through Maps, other books and maps visit islandmapstore.com or call 239-963-3497.
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Categories: News
Florida Keys Map

History of North Key Largo

23 Jun
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Key Largo has recently reopened after being shut down to the public for nearly two months. Many people will flocking here since this is one of the best times to visit the Keys - in early summer when the air is warm but the water still somewhat cool from winter! It is also a good time to visit since things are still quiet, just be sure to have reservations since resorts are easing back into business. Here’s a little history on the northern part of Key Largo if you go, or even if you don't! Stay tuned for a future blog on the southern end of Key Largo. The Spanish name for Key Largo was Cayo Largo, or Long Cay which is fitting since Key Largo is about thirty-three miles long. While southern Key Largo is known for the spectacular reef in John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, the north portion of the island is known for its extensive preserves and the famous fishing and golf resort, the Ocean Reef Club. Key Largo was sparsely populated in 1905 when Henry Flagler’s railroad from Miami came into the area. The railroad turned south and left the north side of Key Largo isolated but early settlers could still access the train at Key Largo station. From there they were able to move into the wilderness of northern Key Largo, a place that remained untamed with few exceptions as Flagler’s railroad opened up the rest of the Keys to development. Due to the isolation, a series of environmental laws resulted in various parks being created. These included John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park established in 1963, Key Largo Hammock State Park which contains one of the largest tracts of West Indian tropical hardwood hammock in the U.S. and Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge with more than 6,000 acres along the eastern shores of Card and Barnes Sounds. Wealthy residents of the Ocean Reef Club contributed to preserving even more natural land in the area that had been slated for large developments. The Ocean Reef Club is certainly the dominant feature of North Key Largo outside of the wilderness preserves. The Club has evolved into one of the premier yacht-club communities in the world. During the Miami land boom of the roaring ’20s, sport fishing became popular in the Upper Keys, and the Dispatch Creek Fishing Camp was established where Ocean Reef is today. In 1945 Morris Baker, a Minneapolis developer, bought the fish camp and built guest rooms. He dredged the original channel and cut canals using the fill to create dry lots. He created Buccaneer Island, a tidal swimming lagoon screened from the sea to keep out sharks and a 2,000-foot airstrip aligned in anticipation of a road once envisioned for access from Key Biscayne to Key Largo. He also built a nine-hole golf course, which required a rock crusher to create a usable base from the rugged Keys soil. By the late 1950s lot values ranged from $4,750 to $17,500. Today’s homes range in the millions of dollars. Whether you’re going to the Ocean Reef Club or to visit one of the remote parks in area, the northern part of Key Largo is a unique part of the Keys. To learn more about history of North Key Largo and other islands in the Keys, check out The Florida Keys A History Through Maps. The book and custom maps of the Keys can be purchased online at this website. Please call Island Map Store with any questions at 239-963-3497.
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Categories: Book Blog

The History of Bimini in The Bahamas

16 Jun
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If you plan to travel to Bimini, be sure to research the latest travel advisories and have any documentation ready. This also applies to the many boaters passing through Bimini to clear customs and obtain their cruising permit. But no matter how you travel to Bimini, you’ll be visiting a country rich in history.

The Bahamas and Bimini were populated by Lucayan Indians when the Spanish arrived. They soon enslaved them to work in the mines of Hispaniola, today’s Dominican Republic and Haiti, exterminating the population. Bimini was northwest of the route first taken by Columbus in 1492 but was likely visited by Ponce de León during his first expedition to Florida in 1513. While de Leon was given credit for discovering Florida in 1513 he did not, a number of earlier maps clearly show the Florida peninsula. He did however name it “La Florida.” Reports of him looking for the Fountain of Youth in Bimini are not supported by the historical record.

Pirates were very real in the Bahamas and in the early 1700s a large community of them took over Nassau from the British. They attacked ships of any nation, but the biggest prize was Spanish galleons using the Gulf Stream off Bimini to return to Spain, laden with treasure from the New World. Pirates no doubt used the shallow waters around Bimini to lie in wait for passing ships.

Wreckers made their living salvaging cargo from ships that sank on the reefs surrounding Bimini. The five founding families of Bimini were licensed wreckers in 1834. This date coincides with British emancipation of slaves in the Bahamas; their descendants make up most of today’s population. Early residents eventually became known as Conchs, making their living off the sea by fishing, sponging, and wrecking. For generations wrecking was one of the few profitable endeavors in The Bahamas but lighthouses soon made wrecks less common. Gun Cay Light was built in 1836 south of Bimini, and Great Isaac Lighthouse in 1859 on a little island twenty miles north of Bimini, which stands more than 150 feet tall, making it one of the tallest in The Bahamas.

The country struggled financially but during the American Civil War the south used the “neutral” British Bahamas to trade cotton for European guns and supplies, which were run past the Union blockade into southern ports. This provided some prosperity. Good times returned during American Prohibition (1920–1933) when liquor was legal in the Bahamas. Bimini and nearby Gun Cay and Cat Cay were waypoints where schooners laden with liquor would anchor, acting as open warehouses for the American rum-runners. The concrete shipwreck seen today south of Bimini, the Sapona, was used to store liquor but was wrecked by a hurricane in 1926 along with the original Bimini Bay Rod and Gun Club which included a large hotel and casino.

Chalk’s Flying Service began flying the Bimini route from Miami in 1919, and service continued until a tragic crash in 2005 killed a number of Bimini residents and doomed what was the world’s oldest airline of the time. Just a year later in 2006 the ‘Compleat’ Angler Hotel burned down, an iconic Bimini landmark that had hosted Ernest Hemingway as he fished for huge Blue Fin tuna that were once abundant.

Today’s Bimini is still host to fisherman and gamblers alike!

To learn more about history of Bimini and other islands in the Bahamas, check out A History of The Bahamas Through Maps. The book can be purchased online at this website. For all questions, please call us at 239-963-3497.

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Categories: Book Blog

The Making of the Keys Book

09 Jun
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Writing history books is hard work, no doubt about it. Everything you write has to be backed up by fact and by experts who edit your work. Then it's off to the printer and for a book with extensive exhibits like ours, a special book bindery. The Florida Keys is my third book, each an extensive and exhausting project.

People ask how I do it with a busy career in Ocean Engineering and the answer is two fold. First is perseverance; I often write between 4 and 8 AM before interruptions start, it's when I do my best work. Second is help; Keys co-authors Brian Schmitt and archaeologist Bob Carr are world experts on the chapters they wrote, I couldn't have done it without them. Finally my experienced staff who turn my ideas into exhibits and my writing into pleasant narrative, it's not easy to make history fun for most people to read.

I also get asked why we do it, that answer varies. My first book Naples Waterfront – Changes in Time was inspired by older clients who built the waterfront communities near my home. They were dying out and over time came to trust me with their old stories, maps and photographs. One old fella had shared rare historical insight with me and the next time I saw him he asked "how's your book coming?" I was embarrassed with little progress to show but when he later died there was no longer a choice. Seven years later the book was published, yep, 7!

The Naples book was more successful than I could have imagined and a Bahamian friend asked if I could do one for his country. I'd worked there for many years and had read every history book I could get my hands on. We'd also made popular maps of the Bahamas, one hangs in U.S. Customs. Five years later A History of The Bahamas Through Maps was born, yep, 5.

The Keys book began when my friend Brian Schmitt half jokingly suggested my next should be on the Keys, he liked the Bahamas. I said sure, also in jest, knowing what a gargantuan task that would be. Brian and I both collect antique maps and his famous 1591 version of Florida is on the Naples book cover. His map collection is much better than mine, world class in fact. When he agreed to do the mapping chapter our jokes became reality and yet another book was born, but this time not without drama.

While we worked on the Keys I was asked to speak at the annual Miami Map Fair, the largest antique map show in the world. Since the Keys book was due out about the same time as the Fair I suggested we announce something featured in the book, that Ponce de Leon did not discover Florida in 1513 as is written. There are Ponce de Leon streets, monuments and school book references, so we were being bold to challenge Florida history. Our proof lies in the fact a half dozen maps pre-dating 1513 show the Florida peninsula. Some of these are featured in the Keys book so we needed it for back up at the Map Fair if I was to make the statement.

The drama to deliver the book on time started when our printer suddenly passed away over Christmas in Canada. His widow said they couldn't honor the deadline, the book wouldn't be done on schedule.

Soon I was in Toronto working with the widow to help get it done since hints of our revisionary history statement had already been released to the press. I visited the giant printing press and met the employees who were already working on the book, they were great. First lesson, if the factory is behind schedule, go there. The possibility of meeting the deadline emerged but there was another critical step.

Nashville has one of the few facilities in America that can produce a binding that allows a book to lay flat when opened. This was needed for our map overlays, a first for the Keys.

Suddenly I was in Nashville meeting the employees of the bindery. They had just started working on our piece, of course, refer to First lesson. Spending a few days there moved the process along since I could answer questions quickly, but the due date was fast approaching with an outcome still uncertain. Only after a second trip to Nashville a couple weeks later did I finally hold copies of the book in hand for the Miami press conference. The second trip took driving 2,000 miles in four days, a feat I hadn't done since my 20s. My reward was falling in love with Nashville's incredible music scene with one too many Titos & Tonics. My punishment was driving home the next day.

That's the story of how we made the Keys book, it arrived just in time for COVID-19 to shut down of the Map Fair. We still had the press conference which was attended by a single Miami Herald reporter and photographer. They did a really nice article, but our book launch didn’t get the momentum we hoped for due to a worldwide struggle with the pandemic.

The Keys History book is our best work yet and word is slowly getting out with good reviews. It will, however, likely be my last non-fiction since taking years to produce them sucks the life right out of you. I'm now working on a historical fiction now with wild stories to tell, we'll see how that goes.

You can find more information about the Keys book on this website.

Todd Turrell

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Categories: Book Blog

The History of Cay Sal in The Bahamas

02 Jun
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The Cay Sal Bank is one of my favorite places in the Bahamas from many perspectives. It’s an extremely remote area with pristine wildlife but no public access unless you have a boat, or a helicopter! We have had fabulous trips for work and exploration on many of the islands around Cay Sal, and the Bank has turned into a favorite vacation destination. Marathon, in the Florida Keys, is fifty-five miles to the north with Cuba lying half that distance to the south. You have to clear Bahamian customs to be legal before you go, but the nearest facilities are in Bimini or Cat Cay, well over 100 miles away. Cay Sal, meaning “salt cay” in Spanish, was discovered during exploration of the New World and is depicted on many of the first maps. The island has an interior lagoon where s ea salt could be easily produced by solar evaporation and there are records of the Spanish doing just that. An 1824 English map also shows “Salt Rakers Hutts” on the island when it was a British possession. Salt was in great demand as a preservative prior to refrigeration; it was used to preserve meat, seafood and many other commodities. In 1839 a lighthouse was built by England’s Imperial Lighthouse Service 15 miles north of Cay Sal on Elbow Cay. The location was strategic to Gulf Stream shipping, warning vessels off the Bank which has claimed many ship wrecks ov er the years. The remains of ships can still be seen in shallow water. In the early 1950s the Cay Sal Aeromarine Club was formed with Sir Roland Symonette as the Bahamian partner and Ernest Hemingway included on the American side. The Club burgee is shown at the top of the page. The island was used an exclusive fishing destination with part of the lagoon dredged for a marina and the fill used to create an airstrip. The last remaining structure was used by the Bahamas Defense Force up to the early 1990s, it has since been burned down. The island is less than thirty miles off the Cuban coast and was ideal for spying on the new communist regime after the Cuban revolution around 1960. This is when Howard Hughes became the final member of the Aeromarine Club and suddenly American missions to oust Castro were being launched from the island. The remote nature has left the Cay Sal Bank exposed to poaching by nations including Honduras. Two “motherships” from that nation were caught in the 1990s poaching fish, turtles and crawfish (lobster). The incident turned into an international affair when Bahamian police officers placed on the arrested vessels were taken hostage by the Hondurans as they fled for home port. American jets were scrambled in pursuit and the Bahamians were eventually released unharmed. To learn more about history of Cay Sal and other islands in the Bahamas, check out A History of The Bahamas Through Maps. The book can be purchased online on this website. For all questions, please call us at 239-963-3497.
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Categories: Book Blog

The History of Eleuthera in the Bahamas

26 May
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The Bahamian island of Eleuthera is a beautiful destination with miles of remote beaches and sports that I love including deep sea fishing, scuba diving, snorkeling and exploring. To me Eleuthera means driving the length of the island and visiting the many old settlements inhabited by friendly people.

First inhabited by Lucayan Indians, Spanish explorers came upon the island in the late 1400s and by the early 1500s had enslaved them to perish in the silver and gold mines of Hispaniola (today Haiti and the Dominican Republic).

In 1648 colonization of The Bahamas began on the north shore of Eleuthera where the “Eleutheran Adventurers” came from Bermuda with religious freedom as the driving force. They named the island “Eleutheria” after the Greek word for Freedom. The colonists survived on fish, turtle, conch and trade goods they collected from the sea including dye woods, ambergris from whales and items salvaged from wrecks along the coast. They soon spread out to start today’s settlements in Spanish Wells and Harbour Island.

The late 1700s saw an influx of British Loyalists who were fleeing the new United States of America after losing the Revolutionary War where they had remained loyal to King George. The Loyalists started plantations with the slaves they brought but failed to recreate the wealth they had in America and most eventually left, leaving their slaves behind. Eventually pineapples became the top crop of Eleuthera and by the mid-1800s exports to England and the United States soared. More than 200 sloops and schooners would sail every morning from Harbour Island to north Eleuthera where plantations of pineapples fed the international market. In 1872, 1.5 million pineapples were shipped from Harbour Island alone.

In the 1950s an auxiliary U.S. Air Force base and missile tracking station opened on Eleuthera, part of several such bases in the Bahamas. The 1960s and ‘70s were grand days with Hatchet Bay Farm producing milk and eggs while second homes were being built on Harbour Island, Windermere and in other areas. The Cotton Bay Club had a golf course, as did Cape Eleuthera, with movie stars and celebrities flown in to entertain. The French Leave Club (later renamed Club Med) and a large Italian resort attracted French and Italian tourists along with the English and a growing American crowd. Juan Trippe, president of Pan Am Airlines, expanded Rock Sound’s airport to accommodate jets from New York and Miami. Planes from England, France and Italy could also come directly into Eleuthera. Princess Diana and Prince Charles vacationed on Windermere with other royalty and celebrities, playboys and jet setters. Eleuthera was the place to be.

Unfortunately, things began to decline, and by the early 1970s many of clubs closed. By late ‘70s drug smuggling had become a problem because of the Bahamas close proximity to the U.S. Today smuggling in the Bahamas has largely subsided and Eleuthera is a safe place to be.

There are any small resorts and guest houses in Eleuthera to choose from, endless miles of white and pink beaches to walk upon, and plenty of kind natives to help you enjoy the endless activities on the island and around the sea.

To learn more about history of Eleuthera and other islands in the Bahamas, check out A History of The Bahamas Through Maps. The book and custom map of Eleuthera can be purchased online at this website. Questions? Please call us at 239-963-3497.

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Categories: Book Blog
The Florida Keys History

New Book Release

18 Mar
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Our new book The Florida Keys - A History Through Maps is available for purchase now!   The books have arrived at our Naples office, 3584 Exchange Ave., Naples, Florida 34104.   You can drop by for your copy during business hours or order online today.   For any questions, or to order over the phone, call our office at 239-963-3497  
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Categories: News

Press Conference for New Book Release

18 Mar
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A press conference was held at the Epic Hotel on Friday, March 13th releasing the new book The Florida Keys - A History Through Maps.   Information was also released that will change history forever. As the featured images show, Florida was well mapped prior to 1513 when Ponce de Leon was said to have discovered Florida. Additional maps in the new Keys book back up this statement with copies of maps prior to 1513, which can be found in museums in Spain, Italy and at the Library of Congress in Washington DC.   Additional archaeological evidence presented by former Dade County archaeologist Bob Carr also points to the fact that other Europeans certainly pre-dated De Leon in Florida.   Ponce de Leon named " la Florida" in 1513 but he came in the wake of many other New World explorers; likely including other Spaniards, English, Portuguese and Italians.   We now know that what has been taught for centuries in countless books is false, de Leon is responsible for naming Florida but is certainly not responsible for discovering it.     For more information about the book, check out this website.
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