September 7

A car and two fishermen on the wooden bridge of the first Overseas Highway at Boca Chica, 1926

1830 – A Key West correspondent wrote, “Key West is as healthy as any place in the United States; we have not a case of fever of any sort, nor has there been during the season.”

1839 – The U.S. Mail schooner Hope, sailing from Charleston to Key West, wrecked on Washerwoman Shoal near Key Vaca. The vessel and cargo were lost, but the crew was saved.

1878 – A hurricane that claimed hundreds of lives in Cuba and Haiti passed over the Middle Keys on a due north course that took it over the Everglades.

1925 – A celebration was held for the opening of the Boca Chica bridge, the first step in the new Overseas Highway being built through the Florida Keys. A “mammoth motorcade” left Key West, crossed Stock Island and then traversed the new bridge to Rocky Point on Boca Chica Key for the celebration.

1935 – A week after the Labor Day hurricane, rescuers reached the mainland Monroe County fishing and farming community of Cape Sable via seaplane. All signs of the settlement were gone. Four men were found in a boat, and they said they had tied themselves and their families to trees to survive.

1945 – The pesticide DDT was sprayed over sections of Key West to great effect. In the areas sprayed, mosquitoes “had been so greatly reduced few were felt by residents seated on their verandas.”

1983 – Jennie Bethel deBoer died at the age of 97. She grew up at the Key West Lighthouse, where her father, William Bethel was the keeper for 25 years. During World War I she served in the Navy as a Yeomanette. After the war, she worked for The Key West Citizen for 35 years.

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

Image: A car and two fishermen on the wooden bridge of the first Overseas Highway at Boca Chica, 1926. Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.