1956 – Max Marmorstein sold the Casa Marina Hotel for $800,000 to businessman Beale Poste of Granville, Ohio. Marmorstein had owned the luxury hotel since 1950.

1960 – After the accidental shooting of a Miami man on No Name Key, Monroe County Sheriff’s officials denied reports the island was being used as an amphibious invasion training ground by Cuban refugees. Instead, they said, it was a group of unemployed drifters who had decided to “live off the land” of the remote key.

1962 – The Isaak Walton League passed a resolution at its annual convention requesting the Monroe County Commission make Pigeon Key a visitors’ center and marine nature park with facilities for educating children.

1963 – Entomologists were zeroing in a species of whitefly recently found on Stock Island as the spreader of a lethal yellowing virus that was destroying coconut palms. Since its first appearance in Key West in 1954, the disease had killed 80% of Lower Keys coconut trees.

1958 – Billy Watkins Moody, serving a sentence in Monroe County Jail for larceny, admitted to having started multiple fires in Key West.

1954 – After completing structural surveys, the Florida Road Department greenlighted 2,000 feet of fishing catwalks on bridges.