April 11

Aerial view of a building and boats near Alabama Jack's bar along Card Sound Road.

1898 – William Curry Sons electrical company had a contract to install electric lights in the Monroe County Courthouse on Whitehead Street.

1901 – N.M. George on the yacht Privateer fishing in the Bahia Honda channel landed a tarpon that weighed 213 pounds and measured 7 feet 2 inches in length and 46 inches around.

1946 – Developers Frank Bentley, Clifford Hisks, and Frank Toppino announced plans to build 21 houses in the area where White Street and Flagler Avenue intersect in Key West. The land had been bulldozed, and construction was awaiting the delivery of lumber.

1949 – Secretary of National Defense Louis Johnson left after two days of meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

1951 – Elliott Roosevelt, son of the late president Franklin Roosevelt, bought one and a half acres of land in Marathon for $35,000. He planned to build a home and motel on the property that stretched from the Overseas Highway to Florida Bay.

1956 – The Monroe County Anti-Mosquito District completed a project on Long Key where they filled in a 1 ¼-mile-long stretch of county-owned oceanfront with sand to create a 125-yard-wide beach. The formerly swampy area had long been a hotspot for mosquito breeding.

2010 – After a five-year effort by multiple government agencies to clear the area of illegal dwellings and derelict boats, the makeshift fishing village stretching alongside the road near Card Sound Bridge was largely gone.

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Information compiled by Dr. Corey Malcom, Lead Historian, Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.

Image: Aerial view of a building and boats near Alabama Jack's bar along Card Sound Road. Photo taken by the federal government on October 7, 1987. From the Wright Langley Collection. Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.