August 6

The Seven Mile Bridge and Pigeon Key, 1920s.

1892 – Collector of Customs John Horr was having electric lights installed in the new Custom House as it was feared that odor from the gas lights could cause loss of life.

1901 – An election was held for bonds to improve the public schools, build an armory, repair the county courthouse and continue developing the county road. Only 200 of the 900 qualified voters cast their ballots, and all the issues were defeated.

1909 – Chief Gunner Charles Morgan, U.S. Navy, retired from Naval Station Key West. Morgan was senior diver, and he had conducted the investigation on the Battleship Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898.

1926 – Boy Scout Troop No.1 of Key West was encamped at Pigeon Key. “There is some of the best fishing and swimming in the world to be had two hundred feet from camp. The boys say that this is the best time they have ever had,” wrote scoutmaster Charles Sands. 

1953 – The fourth and fifth cases of polio in Monroe County for the year occurred in a Navy man and his wife. They were diagnosed at the Key West Navy Hospital with “non-paralytic” polio.

1956 – Monroe County Clerk Earl Adams announced the state comptroller approved the county’s budget of $1,550,258 for the upcoming fiscal year. The millage rate of 8.4 was unchanged from the previous year.

1966 – A site on Homestead Avenue had been donated by the Raeburn Corporation and funds were being raised for the new 70-by-40-foot Key Largo Lions Club “den.”

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

Image: The Seven Mile Bridge and Pigeon Key, 1920s. Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.