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Drifting lands key5/3/2023 Following the war, the lighthouse was returned to service on August 23, 1866, after having been overhauled and repaired. However, service and life in general, was interrupted the following year when the Civil War broke out.Ĭedar Keys Lighthouse was extinguished at the onset of the war, and in January 1862, Union forces aboard the USS Hatteras blockaded the keys, ruined the port and rail terminus at Cedar Key, and destroyed all structures of military value at Seahorse Key. The newly completed railroad was considered Florida’s finest. Construction began in 1853 and reached Cedar Keys in 1860. ![]() During its peak in the 1880s, the mill employed roughly one hundred people, paying a top salary of around $3 per day.ĭavid Levy Yulee, Florida’s first senator, was instrumental in establishing a railroad line that linked Fernandina on the state’s east coast to Cedar Keys. A pencil mill was established on Atsena Otie Key, which appropriately means Cedar Island in the Creek Indian language. With his eye on using the area’s plentiful cedar trees for the manufacturing of pencils, Eberhard Faber purchased large tracts of land around Cedar Keys in 1855. Photograph courtesy State Archives of FloridaĮquipped with a lighthouse, the Cedar Keys area soon started to attract commercial enterprises. The mound itself rose fifty-two feet above the sea, reportedly making it the highest point on Florida’s west coast. Perched atop “The Mound,” an elevated section of land that served as the island’s spine, Cedar Keys Lighthouse had a focal plane of seventy-five feet, which made the light visible for fifteen miles. The lighthouse consisted of a seventy-foot-square dwelling with a hipped roof, through the center of which a spiral staircase led upward to the lantern room. The light’s characteristic was fixed white, punctuated by a flash every minute. Materials and a crew arrived on the island by the end of March, and William Wilson, the lighthouse’s first keeper, lit the wicks in the tower’s fourth-order Fresnel lens for the first time on August 1, 1854. In January 1854, the Lighthouse Board approved plans submitted by George Meade for the construction of the lighthouse. The following year, an additional $4,000 was earmarked for the lighthouse. Taylor’s successor, Millard Fillmore issued an executive order on September 2, 1851, officially reserving Seahorse Key for lighthouse purposes. In September 1850, two months following the death of President Taylor, his prophecy was fulfilled, when Congress appropriated $8,000 for the erection of Seahorse Key Lighthouse. ![]() ![]() Taylor had the authority to make his prophecy come to pass as he was elected President of the United Sates in 1849, however, he died after just over a year in office. “The outer key (Seahorse Key) of the group the Government should retain,” he wrote, “as on it will no doubt be erected, at some future time, a lighthouse for the benefit of vessels trading to the Suwanee River.” During this conflict, General Zachary Taylor requested that the Cedar Keys be reserved for military purposes. A supply depot and hospital were established on Atsena Otie Key, while Seahorse Key was used as a detention camp for Indians being relocated to the West. The individual islands have colorful names like Rattlesnake Key, Grassy Key, Deadmans Key, and Seahorse Key (named so because its contour resembles a seahorse), but the name for the collection of islands stems from the stands of Cedar trees formerly found thereon.ĭuring the Second Seminole Indian War (1835 – 1842), the U.S. Just south of the entrance to the Suwannee River is found a group of low-lying islands known as the Cedar Keys. The song’s famous first line, “Way down upon the Swanee River,” refers to the Suwannee River that empties into the Gulf of Mexico along a sparsely populated section of the Floridian coast, fifty miles southwest of Gainesville. Such is not the case for the state song of Florida, Old Folks at Home, written by Stephen Foster, who ironically never stepped foot in the state. ![]() residents would be hard pressed to recognize their own state’s song, even if it were sung for them. Each of the fifty states has an official state song, however most U.S.
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