A skeleton found on the island in 1999 was determined to be more than 2,000 years old, attesting to the occupation of the island by Native Americans at that time.[2] In the early 16th century, Spanish explorers reached the Gulf coast of Florida and left their mark in many ways. By the early 17th century, the native population had died off severely due to diseases brought by Europeans. By the 19th century most of the island's indigenous people had been forced to move to reservations out West.
The First and Second Seminole Wars
From 1818 to the early 1820s the island was used as a trading post, and was important during the First Seminole War. It remained as such until Florida was made a U.S. Territory in 1821.[citation needed] In 1840 General Walker Keith Armistead, commander at that time of United States troops in the Second Seminole War, ordered construction of a hospital on the island.[3] U.S. Army headquarters for the war in Florida were moved to the island, and it became known as Depot Key.[4] In August, 1842 Colonel William J. Worth, commander of the U.S. Army in Florida, met with Seminole leaders on Depot Key and negotiated an agreement that if the Seminoles retreated to southernmost Florida and stayed there the Army would leave them be. On the basis of this agreement, Colonel Worth declared the Second Seminole War to be over. In October, 1842 Depot Key was hit by a hurricane that caused so much damage that the Army abandoned the post.[5]
Economic growth
In 1843 Augustus Steele claimed Depot Key under the Armed Occupation Act of 1842. He renamed the island Atsena Otie Key and built summer cottages for wealthy Florida and Georgia planters. The meaning of the name and Steele's reason for choosing it are unclear. The Cedar Key Post Office was established in 1845, with Augustus Steele as the first postmaster.[6]
During the 1850s trade grew on the island. A lighthouse serving the Cedar Keys harbor was built on Seahorse Key and put into operation in 1854. The Florida Railroad (which ran across Florida from Fernandina) reached the Cedar Keys in 1861, and a terminal was constructed on Way Key (to the north of Atsena Otie Key).[7] In 1855 A. W. Faber bought large tracts of land in Levy County to be cut for timber. A small amount of land was bought on the island in 1856, which would later become the site for a lumber mill.
Then in January 1858 the town of Atsena Otie was officially chartered by the Florida State legislature. By the time of the 1860 Census there were 215 men, women, and children living in 30 households on the island.
On 7 January 1862 the USS Hatteras landed U.S. Navy sailors and Marines and attacked the rail head at Station No. 4. They were at first repulsed by a company of Florida state cavalry and local civilian workers, but succeeded in destroying the tracks, engines, and buildings before they retreated to the ship. Then the Hatteras boarded and either sank or burned seven blockade runners in the harbor at Depot Key, and landed a small force to burn the harbor facilities. This small but important event has become known as the Battle of Cedar Key.
The USS Somerset
The USS Somerset captured the blockade runnerCurlew off Atsena Otie Key in June 1862; and later she destroyed the salt works on James Island near Depot Key in October. This was very disastrous as the Union sailors accounted for some two thousand bushels of salt destroyed, with all the works. They also captured many civilian workers, slaves and horses.
Reconstruction
The Eberhard Faber Pencil Company built a lumber mill in 1868 on Atsena Otie Key to supply wood for its pencil factory in New Jersey. The area revived as a shipping port and much lumber was milled.
By the 1870s the oyster, green turtle, and fishing industries had also grown on the island. By the 1890s lumber production was making a profit of almost $900,000, and the Faber Mill alone produced wood for casing more than a third of a million pencils. The town grew as well, and by 1895 there were more than 50 households back living on the island.
A powerful hurricane and a 10-foot storm surge crossed the island on September 29, 1896. The Eberhard Faber mill was destroyed and the island was wrecked except for a few houses.[8] The cedar forests that fed the mills on Atsena Otie Key had mostly been cut over, and the mill companies did not consider it worth while to rebuild. A business building and several houses that escaped destruction were floated across to Cedar Key (formerly Way Key), and lumber salvaged from the wreckage of the mills was used for construction on Cedar Key. While most residents moved from Atsena Otie Key to Cedar Key after the hurricane, some stayed into the 20th century. The last wooden house standing on the island was torn down in the 1940s and the lumber was taken to Cedar Key.[9]
Modern History
Atsena Otie Key today
In 1923 Atsena Otie Key was purchased for $500, and in 1929 the Cedar Keys National Wildlife Refuge established on nearby Snake, Bird, and North Keys. In 1950 the last remaining house on the island was destroyed by Hurricane Easy.
Mahon, John K. (1985). History of the Second Seminole War: 1835-1842 (Reviseded.). Gainesville, Florida: University Presses of Florida. p.279. ISBN0-8130-1097-7.
McCarthy, Kevin M. (2006). Cedar Key, Florida: An Illustrated History. Gainesville, Florida: Nature Coast Publishing House. ISBN978-1-4276-0897-0.
Punta Rassa is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Lee County, Florida, United States. The population was 1,750 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Cedar Key is a city in Levy County, Florida, United States. The population was 702 at the 2010 census. The Cedar Keys are a cluster of islands near the mainland. Most of the developed area of the city has been on Way Key since the end of the 19th century. The Cedar Keys are named for the eastern red cedar Juniperus virginiana, once abundant in the area.
The Second Seminole War, also known as the Florida War, was a conflict from 1835 to 1842 in Florida between various groups of Native Americans collectively known as Seminoles and the United States, part of a series of conflicts called the Seminole Wars. The Second Seminole War, often referred to as the Seminole War, is regarded as "the longest and most costly of the Indian conflicts of the United States".
The Suwannee River is a river that runs through south Georgia southward into Florida in the southern United States. It is a wild blackwater river, about 246 miles (396 km) long. The Suwannee River is the site of the prehistoric Suwanee Straits which separated peninsular Florida from the panhandle.
The Eberhard Faber Pencil Company was started by John Eberhard Faber in 1861 in Midtown Manhattan, New York City by the East River at the foot of 42nd Street, on the present site of the United Nations Headquarters. After an 1872 fire, operations moved to the Eberhard Faber Pencil Factory in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, across the East River, which was acquired by Staedtler, a stationery company with global presence, in 1978. This factory was acquired by Faber-Castell USA in 1994 before being bought by Newell (Sanford) and eventually rolled into the Paper Mate brand.
The Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge (LSNWR) is part of the United States National Wildlife Refuge System. It is located in southeastern Dixie and northwestern Levy counties on the western coast of Florida, approximately fifty miles southwest of the city of Gainesville.
The Cedar Key Light is located on Seahorse Key across the harbor from Cedar Key, Florida. Seahorse Key was the site a watchtower erected in 1801 by followers of William Augustus Bowles, self-designated Director General of the State of Muskogee, an attempt to set up an independent state in the western part of East Florida. The watchtower was destroyed by a Spanish naval force in 1802. Seahorse Key was used as a detention center for Seminoles captured in the Second Seminole War (1835–1842) before transfer to the West. At that time the Federal government reserved several of the islands in the Cedar Keys archipelago for military use.
The current Egmont Key Light dates from 1858. It is the oldest structure in the Tampa Bay area still used for its original purpose.
The Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge is a 402,000‑acre (1,627 km2) National Wildlife Refuge located in Charlton, Ware, and Clinch Counties of Georgia, and Baker County in Florida, United States. The refuge is administered from offices in Folkston, Georgia. The refuge was established in 1937 to protect a majority of the 438,000 acre (1,772 km2) Okefenokee Swamp. The name "Okefenokee" is a Native American word meaning "trembling earth."
The St. Marks Light is the second-oldest light station in Florida. It is located on the east side of the mouth of the St. Marks River, on Apalachee Bay.
John Eberhard Faber was a German-born American manufacturer of pencils in New York.
The Deptford culture was an archaeological culture in southeastern North America characterized by the appearance of elaborate ceremonial complexes, increasing social and political complexity, mound burial, permanent settlements, population growth, and an increasing reliance on cultigens.
The Cedar Key Historical Society and Museum is located at 609 2nd Street State Road 24, Cedar Key, Florida. It contains exhibits and photographs depicting the history of Cedar Key from prehistoric times through the 20th century, Cedar Key Historical Society, 2008. Accessed August 16, 2008. The museum complex is composed of two buildings, the Lutterloh House serving as the main entranace and the annex is the Andrews House, which was originally on Atsena Otie Key before being moved to the mainland after the 1896 hurricane. It is part of the Cedar Keys Historic and Archaeological District.
Suwannee is an unincorporated community in Dixie County, Florida, United States. It is located on the Suwannee River near its mouth, at the southern end of the Big Bend region of Florida. It is 23 miles southwest of Old Town, to which it is connected by County Road 349.
The Nature Coast State Trail (NCST) is a 31.7-mile long segment of Florida's Statewide System of Greenways and Trails System built along abandoned railroad tracks, and designated by the U.S. Department of the Interior as a National Recreation Trail. It has two primary sections following unused rail lines that were originally built by the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. It includes historic sites such as an old train trestle bridge over the Suwannee River near Old Town and train stations in Trenton, Cross City, and Chiefland. At Wilcox Junction abandoned rail tracks cross and connect with several communities. The trail is available to hikers, cyclists, and horse riders.
The 1899 Carrabelle hurricane caused significant damage in the Dominican Republic and the Florida Panhandle. The second tropical cyclone and second hurricane of the 1899 Atlantic hurricane season, the storm was first observed south of the Dominican Republic on July 28, 1899. Shortly thereafter, it made landfall in Azua Province, Dominican Republic with an intensity equivalent to a Category 1 hurricane on the modern-day Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale. Early on July 29, the system weakened to a tropical storm, shortly before emerging into the Atlantic Ocean. It then moved west-northwestward and remained at the same intensity for the next 24 hours. The storm made landfall near Islamorada, Florida on July 30. It then brushed Southwest Florida before emerging into the Gulf of Mexico. The storm began to re-intensify on July 31 and became a hurricane later that day. Early on August 1, it peaked with winds of 100 mph (155 km/h), several hours before making landfall near Apalachicola, Florida at the same intensity. The storm quickly weakened inland and dissipated over Alabama on August 2.
The 1842 Atlantic hurricane season featured several maritime catastrophes in the Gulf of Mexico and along the U.S. East Coast, and produced one of the only known tropical cyclones to directly affect the Iberian Peninsula. As the season falls outside the scope of the Atlantic hurricane database, records of most storms in 1842 are scarce, and only approximate tracks are known. The first documented storm of the season battered the coast of North Carolina in mid-July, wrecking dozens of ships and destroying homes along the Outer Banks. A little over a month later, another storm impacted the same region and caused several more shipwrecks that killed at least 12 men. This storm later doused the Mid-Atlantic states with flooding rains. In early September, a powerful storm known as "Antje's Hurricane"—named after a ship that it dismasted—tracked generally westward after first being spotted over the Leeward Islands. After yielding widespread destruction across the Bahamas, the storm traversed the Florida Straits, causing severe damage in both northern Cuba and the lower Florida Keys. Many ships and their crews were lost to the storm as it crossed the Gulf of Mexico; it finally struck northern Mexico on September 8.
Augustus Steele was a Florida entrepreneur, a Florida state legislator, and considered the founder of Hillsborough County.
The 1896 Cedar Keys hurricane was a powerful and destructive tropical cyclone that devastated much of the East Coast of the United States, starting with Florida's Cedar Keys, near the end of September 1896. The storm's rapid movement allowed it to maintain much of its intensity after landfall and cause significant damage over a broad area; as a result, it became one of the costliest United States hurricanes at the time. The fourth tropical cyclone of the 1896 Atlantic hurricane season, it formed by September 22, likely from a tropical wave, before crossing the Caribbean Sea just south of the Greater Antilles. It entered the Gulf of Mexico as the equivalent of a major hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson scale, and struck the Cedar Keys—an offshore island chain that includes the island and city of Cedar Key—early on the morning of September 29 with winds of 125 mph (205 km/h). The area was inundated by a devastating 10.5 ft (3.2 m) storm surge that undermined buildings, washed out the connecting railroad to the mainland, and submerged the smaller, outlying islands, where 31 people were killed. Strong winds also destroyed many of the red cedar trees that played an important role in the economy of the region.
Gulf Hammock is a wetlands area in the southern end of Levy County, Florida. It extends along the Gulf of Mexico coast from Cedar Key to the Withlacoochee River, and reaches several miles inland. Gulf Hammock includes the largest expanse of hydric hammock in Florida. The area is mostly uninhabited, with the area closest to the Gulf coast in a state park, and the inland areas primarily used for logging and hunting.
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