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| Ferry "Key West" |
The ferry service was not adequate,
it had a very limited capacity, slow, unreliable, inconvenient and relatively
expensive for the service it provided. The ferries would often run aground, or be
delayed due to low tides. One ferry
captain commented that there was not quite enough water for swimming and too
much for farming. Key West was not
satisfied, so plans were being made to bridge the water gaps, in order to
eliminate the ferries. Army engineers estimated that it would cost
another $7.5 million, but money could not be attained for the project.
Monroe County was
already in debt to the hilt, so the Overseas Highway Bridge Corporation for a
toll road was formed in 1932. Plans to
the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to borrow $10.7 million to be amortized
over 19 years, at which time the highway would be deeded to Monroe County.
The United States was in the midst of a depression, times were hard and money
scarce. October 12, 1932 the Reconstruction
Finance Corporation forwarded its request to President Franklin Roosevelt and
Congress, had placed $3.3 billion in the hands of the federal Board of Public
Works. On July 4, 1934, the government created the Federal Emergency Relief
Administration (FERA). Both Key West and Monroe County had declared bankruptcy
at this point and FERA was sent in to bail them out. Some of the “Bonus
Army” veterans were sent to the Keys to build a highway from Lower Matecumbe Key
to Grassy Key. The engineering and supervision were under the State Road
Department and the veterans had their own supervisors making the coordination
between the two groups problem some. There
were three FERA work camps were built at Snake Creek on Windley Key, at the upper
end of Lower Matecumbe Key and at the
lower end of Lower Matecumbe Key. By
1935, about 700 veterans were at work. There hadn’t been this much dredging,
digging and concrete operations seen in the Keys.
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| Aftermath of the Hurricane of 1935 |
Labor Day, September 2,
1935, train crews were called to form a train to evacuate the veterans in the
Keys from the approaching hurricane. About
an hour later, locomotive number 447 pulled a train out of Miami in route to
Lower Matecumbe. The train was too
late. At about 8:24 that evening the clocks and much of life stopped in the
Islamorada area. Suddenly, the wind and
a 17-foot storm surge of water turned the train cars over. Locomotive number four-forty-seven
had a mission impossible. Four-hundred-and-twenty-plus
lost their lives that night. Over one-half were veterans and their families. One ferry boat was lost. All of the large concrete railroad bridges
stood tall and straight. Many miles of the rock-made causeways and rail beds
were washed out. Only a eight of the concrete highway bridge piers built by the
WW-1 vets remained as evidence of the veterans' work.
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| Laying the Road Bed over the Rail Bridge |
The debate to rebuild
the railroad or build a complete highway began. After the Hurricane,
transportation in the Florida Keys was by plane and ship. Pan American Airways flew to Key West. Using
the remaining car ferries the City of Key West and Florida Keys, a temporary
landing for limited automobile travel was quickly planned by the WPA to the
lower end of Upper Matecumbe Key. Two additional
steel Mississippi River automobile ferries, were brought on line and the Lower
Matecumbe Key ferry landing was restored after washed out fill was replaced.
The Florida East Coast
Railway was out of business, it was bankrupt just like Monroe County. Monroe County's whose population, of which
resided in Key West, needed to have either the railroad or the highway in order
for the county to survive. The highway in the Upper Keys was not
seriously damaged by the hurricane, so the emphasis had to be put on the
completion of the highway to Key West. The
Florida East Coast right-of-way from Florida City to Key West was available for
$640,000 plus some tax debts being forgiven. The Public Works Administration approved a
loan to the Overseas Road and Toll Bridge District for $3,527,429. The District in turn issued revenue bonds to
be repaid with road tolls. The grand total was now about $8 million, roughly
one-seventh what it cost Flagler to build the railroad, and roughly equal to
the Army Corps of Engineers estimate just to bridge the water gaps. Bridges for the highway had
to be much wider than the width of a railroad track, work was contracted out
and the repurposing of the railroad bridges to highway bridges got under way in
May of 1937. Steel beams were laid
across the more conventional bridges and a layer of reinforced concrete encased
the beams. Each bridge was given a nine-inch high and a twenty-inch wide curb.
The road itself was twenty feet, curb to curb. All of this was done without
loss of life. The big challenge
came when they reached Bahia Honda Key, this was a narrow trestle style bridge
across the deepest section of the waters. The top of the camelback trestle rose
a dazzling sixty-five feet in the air. The final solution was to build a
concrete road slab on top of the trusses and start the rise and decent before
reaching the high point of the bridge for safe auto travel. The Bahia Honda
Bridge was the finally bypassed when a new four-lane bridge was constructed in
1972.
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| President Roosevelt Arrives in Key West |
The highway was opened
for traffic on March 29, 1938. The
nation was first made aware of the Overseas Highway on February 18, 1939 when
President Franklin Roosevelt passed through the Upper Keys in route to Key West. Key West mayor, Willard Albury, met the
president at the west end of the Bahia Honda bridge on West Summerland Key
where he accompanied the president to Key West and a tour of the mothballed Key
West Naval Facilities. It was a long
time coming, but it was finally finished and there was a road from Key West to
the Mainland.
