(gentle music) - [Narrator] The early pioneers who ventured to the Florida Keys encountered a
breathtaking frontier, an aqua-tinted ocean
brimming with conch and coral where endless flamingos
filled the skies. - [Resident] It's the light,
it's the smell of the water. - [Narrator] But the
settlers also faced disastrous hurricanes
and unforgiving reefs, where ships were
wrecked by the dozens. - [Historian] The pioneers,
they were a sturdy lot. You had to have something
extra to come live in a place that was a wild outpost. - [Narrator] The people
who arrived on these shores would go on to change
the Keys in many ways, but the Florida Keys would
also profoundly change them. - It felt exotic, it
felt a little scary. It's about a sense
of inclusiveness that I didn't experience
before in my life, and an openness and a feeling of you can be whatever
you want to be here. - I just want to leave the
legacy that was handed me. I want my grandchildren
to be as proud of me as I am of my grandfather. - [Narrator] These remote
islands have seen dramatic, sometimes outrageous history
over the last 200 years, with wreckers and
Cuban cigar factories producing unimaginable
wealth, where black Bahamians founded a proudly
independent community. - The African American history
of the Keys and Key West is a story that
is not out there, and it needs to be out there. - [Narrator] An island
chain where pirates, and later, Nazi submarines
prowled just off the beaches, and where necessity really
was the mother of invention as intrepid engineers
constructed a railroad that soared high above the sea. - There's ebbs and
flows on this island that are almost innumerable, and Key West pivots like no other place, I
think, on the planet pivots into what's next. (energetic music) - [Narrator] Writers
and musicians fell hard for this paradise. Beautiful but quirky,
different, offbeat. - [Historian] We are so
far from the real world that it is a chance to find those other parts
within yourself. (melodious music) - [Narrator] Today,
visitors come for the world-class fishing, the tropical climate, and of course, the
tempting key lime pie. They come because the Keys
know how to throw a good party. (energetic music) - [Announcer] Happy
Birthday, Key West. (people cheering) - You can never enjoy
getting lost somewhere like you can here. - There's also people that come
here to let their hair down, and I like to say, you
either get it or you don't. - [Narrator] But
scratch the surface, and 200 years of adventure
await with booms and busts, villains and heroins,
war and peace. It's this remarkable history
that makes the Florida Keys one of the most fascinating
places in our nation. (horn trumpeting) (melodious music) - [Announcer] Major
funding for this program was provided by... (melodious music) - [Advertiser] Where there is
freedom, there is expression. The Florida Keys and Key West. - [Advertiser] Cultural,
culinary secrets and global flavors. We have a passion for
blending ingredients and seasonings from
around the world. (melodious music) - [Narrator] On the
25th of March, in 1822, Lieutenant Commander
Matthew C. Perry navigated the USS Shark to an island ominously
known as Bone Key. There, Perry planted the
23-star United States flag in the hard,
limestone-riddled soil, and claimed land once owned
by Spain, for America. - Perry's job was
to survey the island and report if it was feasible
to make a Navy facility there. - [Narrator] It was a
strangely uninhabited island. - Most of the Native
Americans of Florida had left or died
out from diseases, or been assimilated into
what's now the Seminoles and the Miccosukees. So, we know that by the time
the Americans came to Keys, they had no record of any Native
Americans being left here. - [Narrator] A
paradise full of peril. - All the world's sailing
through these waterways using outdated,
incomplete charts. As we well know, the reef
runs several hundred miles and is at varying depths
and varying locations, and it's pretty easy
to get lost in it. - [Narrator] Because so
many ships got into trouble, sailors from the Bahamas,
nicknamed Conchs, sailed up and down the
Keys, working as wreckers. - And wrecking was
the job of going out and patrolling the reef-line, looking for ships in peril. And your job as a wrecker
was to approach the ship and offer your assistance in getting that ship
safely off the reef. Or if that wasn't possible, then to rescue the cargo
and rescue the crew. And for that, you were paid
a percentage of the cargo. - [Narrator] With so
many ships wrecking, the government decided
to take action, and by 1827, four
brick lighthouses shone brightly through
the night at Cape Florida, Sand Key, Key West, and
in the Dry Tortugas, yet it wasn't enough. - You got hundreds of
miles worth of reef line that is not marked yet. - [Narrator] Ships continued
to run aground on the reef. Word spread up and down
the eastern seaboard that wrecking in the
Keys was dangerous work, but it could make you rich. - It was a major
source of income. - [Narrator] When New
Englander, Karina Brown, arrived at Key West, she marveled that a wreck
brought in last week was worth $140,000. But, the Florida Keys could
be tough on its settlers, it was a watery wild west. - We'd been subject to piracy from particularly Cuban
piracy at that time. - [Narrator] To combat piracy, the West Indie Squadron
was born in 1823, headed by Commodore David
Porter of the U.S. Navy. - The old anti-piracy
squadron was using ships that were too big, couldn't get in and out
of these narrow channels, couldn't get to
the coast of Cuba. So, Porter devised a strategy where he brought in shallow
draft vessels, and barges, and really started making
a dent against the pirates. - [Narrator] But Porter had to
fight more than just pirates. - Now, Porter's
problem was an enemy that they had not anticipated, and that was the
Key West mosquitoes. Porter's men were
ravaged by yellow fever. - [Narrator] One victim of
the dreaded yellow fever was the head keeper of
the Key West lighthouse, Michael Mabrity. After his death, his wife
Barbara, became the keeper, which was highly
unusual at the time. Climbing steep stairs each
night in her long skirts, she kept the light shining,
even through hurricanes. Six miles away,
on Tiny Sand Key, a fellow widow,
Rebecca Flaherty, also
kept a lighthouse, one of the few female keepers
hired by the government. - The women are very hands-on
in building communities, they are also very
active in their churches, and they are also
physical builders, there's a lot of
physical work to be done. (melodious music) - [Narrator] On Key West,
early leaders did their best to establish some
sense of order, as it was an island with
practically no law enforcement. People seemed free to
do as they pleased. Men were even getting
into deadly duels. (gunshot echoing)
(horse neighing) But this tropical frontier
did not offer freedom to everyone. - There's slavery happening, from the minute Key
West gets settled, there are slaves on this island. - Certainly, Key West
wasn't, you know, this paradise of brotherly love. I mean, we need to
be real about that. - [Narrator] Free people
of color also faced harsh regulations and curfews and were eventually outlawed
from moving to Florida. In the 1850s, about 20% of
Key West's Black population was free, including a free
Black woman named Hannah Brooks, who had arrived
from St. Augustine, a gifted nurse and midwife. One settler recalled that
she won the affection of all. - Hannah Brooks delivered most
of the babies on the island. - [Narrator] Whites
saw no contradiction in accepting medical
care from a Black woman, and enslaving her
sisters and her brothers. Yet, despite all odds, the
Black population persevered and created their own legacy. (melodious music) You cannot underestimate
the Black contribution to the Florida Keys. - It's American history. You know, it belongs
to all of us. You had Bahamians, you had
from all over the Americas, you had even people
from Cape Verde Islands. And if you were emancipated, you had to been taught
a skill, you know? And that was British law. The Bahamian emigrés that came
to Key West were all skilled. They helped build Key West. - [Narrator] And in
the 19th century, one free Black man
literally kept Key West fed on an island where it was
almost impossible to farm. - There is no top soil,
there's no alluvial soil, it's on limestone rock. And no one since, has
ever farmed anything
to that magnitude on Key West. - [Narrator] Sandy Cornish
established a farm on land that belonged to
his wife, Lilliah. - At the time, women
lawfully weren't allowed to own property. But here, an African
American woman owns two lots in Key West. - [Narrator] Key West
had long suffered from a shortage of
fruits and vegetables, but Cornish was an innovator. - So, he knew to mix the
seaweed with the horse manure because there was no
vegetation enough to collect to make compost. What he grew on the farm? All kind of tropical fruits
like your sugar apples, your soursops, your guavas. He grew grapes, melons, cabbages, sweet potatoes. - [Narrator] Sandy Cornish
had been born into slavery in Maryland. By the time he was
brought to Florida, he'd been in bondage
for 40 years, at a time when the average
life expectancy was only 35. Just to enter Florida, the couple had to be
sponsored by a white person. - Lilliah, as a
free Black person, was restricted from
going into Florida. So fundamentally, she had
to put herself into slavery, where she never was, in
order to be by his side. So, they had to work off all
this money and stuff like that, to buy their freedom. - [Narrator] Freedom
came at a high price, $3,000, equal to tens
of thousands today. Later, their freedom
papers burned in a fire. Seizing on that opportunity, a group of men tried
to capture Sandy. - So, they were gonna grab
him and sell him in a market in New Orleans. He takes a knife and
cuts his hamstring right off, right? Bam. And he stumbles a little bit, he goes, "You still want this?" And then, he cuts
off his finger, puts it in his
mouth like a cigar, and the crowd is shocked,
obviously, you know? So, basically, he's
no good anymore. Anything to be free, you
know? And that was the point. - [Narrator] When
Sandy was nearly 50, he and Lilliah started
over, moving to Key West. The nurse, Hannah Brooks, may
have tended to his wounds. Even as free people, the Cornishes still faced
very restrictive laws. Despite the discrimination, Sandy's fruit and vegetable
trade was a huge success. The Cornish Farm became
a local institution. - Though he's making money, he's making oodles of money. - [Narrator] Sandy was
now a leading citizen and helped to build
a Black church. - He's a very influential guy. He's also African
American, right? Let's not forget that. So, you have a mindset
of people who basically didn't accept African
Americans as people, in the beginning anyway, so he basically had changed
a lot of people's mind because he had an astute
knowledge of business. - [Narrator] His success story appeared in newspapers
across the nation. - And his rise to iconic figure
is now being set in motion. (melodious trumpeting) - [Narrator] Although Florida
would join the Confederacy during the Civil War,
Union forces held Key West. Black Key Westers served
in the Union Army. And then, after Abraham Lincoln
was assassinated in 1865, President Andrew Johnson
sent a group to the south to survey the
effects of slavery. The group traveled to Key
West because word had spread about Sandy Cornish and
this remarkable community. - They say, in the report, that the most
successful community, African American community
in the South, was Key West. So, they're arguing at this
point to Andrew Johnson, saying, "No, African Americans
are equal to white people because we have this community
in Key West, you know? That proves that if left alone, they could survive,
they could prosper." And that was the the
major take-home message that they keep hammering
to Andrew Johnson, to do the framework
for reconstruction based on the
community in Key West. (melodious music) - [Narrator] Doors started to
open for Black achievement. - Key West elected not only a
Black sheriff, Charles DuPont, but a Black county
judge, James Dean. - [Narrator] Famous
abolitionist and writer, Frederick Douglas, even
visited the island, and a school for Black children
was established in his name. The school opened in 1870, located in today's
Bahama Village, a neighborhood with deep
roots in Key West history. (melodious music) While Sandy supplied Key West, throughout the Keys, both Blacks and whites
learned to work the land. - They farmed the land
and they farmed the ocean. - [Narrator] Pioneers
grew key limes, and at one point, pineapples
were very profitable. - 85% of the pineapples
consumed in the United States were produced in
the Florida Keys. - [Narrator] Until a blight
destroyed the industry. Despite Jim Crow laws that reversed the racial
progress of reconstruction, Black settlers still
saw opportunities
in the Florida Keys. - Georges and Olivia Adderley, they came from the
Bahamas in about 1890, they moved to Key Vaca,
better known as Marathon, and they bought- George bought 32 acres of land. - [Narrator] George and
Olivia built an unusual house of tabby, homemade concrete. - [Brad] Today, their
house, the Adderley house, is the oldest house
in the Florida Keys that's outside of Key West, and it was built in the style of a classic Bahamian structure. - [Narrator] The Adderley
home became the cornerstone of an independent
Black community. - There was about five families
living in what became known as Adderley Town, and
they were farmers, fishermen, and sponges. They made charcoal. - The sponges really became
part of this larger industry were largely people
who had been enslaved and had been taken from Africa and released by the British
government in The Bahamas when the slave trade
became illegal. - [Narrator] In the early 1900s, millionaire, Henry Flagler,
wanted to build his railroad across George Adderley's land. Adderley made Flagler
strike a deal. - He basically made
the Flagler railroad stop at his property
in Marathon. - George was smart
enough to know that if they had a train stop there, they could get their products,
you know, to market better. - [Narrator] There is so much
Black history in the Keys still waiting to be discovered
just beneath the surface, including one of the Florida
Keys most famous wrecks, a slave ship named the Guerrero,
that went down in 1827. - When they were chased onto
the reef, the ship sunk, so there were 561
of them on there. 41 of them died that night. - [Narrator] Divers
With a Purpose is working to find
the site of the wreck where so many Africans
lost their lives. A 16 year project. One theory is that the ship
sank north of Key Largo, in today's Biscayne
National Park. - We were promised that
if and when it was found, that we as African Americans
would be the first ones to be able to
document that wreck. And for a lot of people, it was about being
where the ancestors lay and just being a
part of history. We need to know what
happened to these folks and put this thing to rest. A lot of African Americans
don't wanna talk about slavery, but you have to
know your history, you have to know
where you've been so you can know
where you're going. - [Narrator] To fully understand
the Florida Keys story, you also have to turn to the
history of Cubans and Jews. (melodious music) In the late 1860s, a
New York tobacco trader set his sights on Key West. Samuel Seidenberg saw big
opportunity in the tiny distance between Key West and Cuba, then the cigar
capital of the world. A few years later, another
tobacco man came to town, this one from Cuba,
Eduardo Hidalgo Gato. On the surface, the men
had little in common other than their line of work. Seidenberg was German, Gato, a Cuban of
Spanish heritage. Seidenberg was Jewish, Gato, a Roman Catholic. The two entrepreneurs
represented two very different communities that would transform Key
West like a tremendous tide. - The Jewish community in
Key West had a huge impact on what we think of
as Key West today, what we think of as
Key West history. - Key West had the first
Cuban American community in the United States. - [Narrator] Despite
their differences, Key West Jews and Cubans
had something in common. They were both people
living in exile, united in their
hunger for freedom. - The Cubans saw in Key West the place where they could
come to plan the struggle for Cuba's independence. - Jewish immigrants had
left their homes in Europe due to persecution. - [Narrator] Before the 1870s, only a modest number
of Cubans and Jews made their home in
the Florida Keys. Yet, Key West began to earn
a reputation for tolerance. - It was a multicultural place,
it was a multilingual place. Close to 50% of people living
in Key West around the 1890s were either Cuban-born or had
at least one Cuban parent. It was a town, you
know, of immigrants. So, Jews that were
coming to Key West were coming to a place
that didn't really look like a lot of America. (melodious music) - [Narrator] But
while those immigrants might possibly find a haven, jobs were another story. With the wrecking
business in decline, Key West no longer had
a profitable industry. Local shops produced
small batches of cigars. But for decades, Cuba had dominated the
luxury cigar industry. All that would change. - [Historian] People continued
to be enchanted by cigars, and it's always told
as a Cuban story. - But more recently,
researchers have uncovered that Jewish entrepreneurs
also played a pivotal role. - [Historian] Samuel
Seidenberg capitalized on a tariff structure that had
gone into place in the 1860s, that made it
financially advantageous to produce cigars domestically in the United States. So he moved to Key West, established a huge
manufacturing base here. - [Narrator] Meanwhile,
the bloody Ten Years' war erupted in Cuba, an effort to overthrow
Spanish rule once and for all. Rebel sympathizers,
like Eduardo Gato, relocated their cigar businesses to the closest American
port city, Key West. - The Cubans who came were
from all walks of life, they were rich and poor, and even the women worked in
the tobacco factories here. - They could maintain
a very close connection to the homeland. Remember, Key West of the time was not connected to
Florida's mainland. - [Narrator] While in the
rest of the Florida Keys, people made their living
by farming and fishing, Key West became the nation's
chief producer of cigars, using Cuban tobacco leaves. - [Historian] The
cigar-making industry really was the economic engine, starting in the 1860s and then
running through the 1890s. - [Narrator] Cigar money
flooded the island. Samuel Seidenberg made a
fortune worth 9 million in today's dollars. Eduardo Gato built himself
a mansion on Duval Street. He created the island's
first street car line and built 40 cottages
to house his workers. A neighborhood they
called Gatoville. But the cigar industry
wasn't the only thing imported from Cuba, there were also
revolutionary politics and a revolutionary leader. - The period of the
1880s and the 1890s when José Marti was here,
organizing the Cuban Rebels. - [Narrator] José Marti was
a famous activist and poet who wrote verses that were
turned into beloved songs, verses still sung
by Cubans today. ♪ Guantanamera ♪ ♪ Guajira Guantanamera ♪ Both Gato and
Seidenberg invited Marti to speak at their
cigar factories. - In Marti, they recognized
a leader who was fighting not just for Cubans,
as Marti said, but for the rights
of all people. He identified the
sense of Cuban exile, which he hoped
would be temporary, with this longer deep historic
sense of Jewish exile. - [Narrator] Jews
like Louis Fine lent their support
and contributed money, and they participated
in smuggling operations that delivered
arms to the rebels. - Louis Fine, he was
not an ordained rabbi, but he was the defacto
rabbi for the community. He was the religious leader. It was his family that told
the story about collaboration with the Cuban revolutionary
fighters under José Marti. And I thought, you
know, that's probably my great-grandfather was
friends with George Washington kind of story, and I
didn't buy it initially. That particular story is a
great example of something that not only turned
out to be true, but turned out to be
a much bigger story than the family knew. (rhythmic drumbeat music) - [Narrator] On Duval Street, factory owner, Teodoro
Pérez, introduced José Marti from the balcony
of his own house, a place that would
come to be known as La Terraza de Marti. Marti's Balcony. José Marti later
wrote in a letter, "I can't deliver from
my heart as I wanted to, all the tenderness,
the just pride, the gratefulness that in
the name of our country, we all owe to the Cuban
immigrants of Key West." - Key West has always been
a symbol of freedom and hope for the Cuban people. - [Narrator] Spain
did not look kindly on Key West's support
of the Cuban rebels. In one instance, a
Spanish newspaper editor challenged a pro-independence
Key West journalist to a duel. And when the great fire reduced
much of Key West to ashes in 1886, rumors flew that
Spanish agents were to blame. (trumpeting music) In 1898, the United
States joined the fray. Soon, Teddy Roosevelt's
Rough Riders were sailing over to Cuba for the 10-week-long
Spanish American war. Spain signed a treaty, and
by 1902, Cuba was truly free. Cubans in Key West
rejoiced at this victory. At the same time, Key
West fortunes were
beginning to crash. - The cigar-making industry
was largely moving to Tampa. - It was easier to
transport the finished cigar from Tampa than from Key West. - It was the kind of downfall
of the cigar-making industry that started to push Key
West into a depression, into an economic downturn. You talk about, you know,
the roaring twenties, but the 1920s in Key West were
really, really hard times. - [Narrator] Yet, the story
of the Cubans and the Jews doesn't end with the death
of Key West's cigar industry. - [Historian] The economic
difficulties of 1920s Key West coincided with a period of
real anti-immigration hysteria, antisemitic hysteria. - [Narrator] In Germany,
something called the Nazi Party was gaining support. And here at home, in
idealistic Key West, the Ku Klux Klan
was on the rise. At the same time,
the U.S. government drastically cut immigration
from the very countries that Jews were hoping to escape. - [Historian] Because of
various legal loopholes, they would often go to Cuba and then try to come from
Cuba into the United States. - A new kind of
smuggling exploded. This time, it wasn't weapons, it was people. - Those smuggling routes
were kind of reopened in the service of, you know,
bringing Jews to safety in the United States. And the community here, had access to a series of
underground kind of chambers and even a tunnel system
that connected some of them in Old Town Key West. - [Narrator] Both Cuban
and Jewish smugglers ferried Jewish refugees
across the Florida straits. They landed not
only at Key West, but also on Summerland
Key, Long Key, Marathon, and Big Pine. - There was the smugglers
who were sort of following the Higher God's law. There were also a lot of
smugglers who were just doing it to make a buck at that time. - [Narrator] Once again, Key
West served as a sanctuary. Some of the smuggled Jewish
refugees traveled north to reunite with family members, making the journey often
not by boat, but by train. Because now, linking
the Florida Keys to the American mainland
was an engineering marvel, the overseas railroad. In 1902, an engineer set out
from Miami with a crew of men. Their goal? They were looking to
do the impossible, build a railroad to Key West. - Initially, the only way
to get down to the Keys, especially in the 19th
century, was by boat only. There was no road
to connect the Keys to the mainland at all. - [Narrator] William
Krome had been hired by standard oil millionaire, Henry Flagler, to help
him fulfill a dream. - He decided that
the State of Florida was an undeveloped frontier where he could build
a chain of hotels and make Florida the Riviera
of the United States. - [Narrator] Krome
reported to Flagler that building a railroad to
Key West through the Everglades would never work, better to
take it through Key Largo. - I don't know that
the federal government could have afforded to build
the bridges in the Keys at that time. There would be question
as to whether or not we would be here today if
it wasn't for Henry Flagler. - Well, some people
called it Flagler's Folly. The railroad never made money. Other people called it one of the greatest engineering
feats of American history. You're having to create
42 bridges over 17 miles of open water. And of course, in those days, that was an extraordinary
accomplishment. - [Narrator] Construction on
the railroad began in 1905, and after all his hard
work serving for Flagler, Krome thought he deserved
the top job, Chief Engineer, but the boss hired someone else. Even before reaching Key Largo, engineers discovered
a large body of water where they expected
to find land. They named it Lake Surprise. A surprise that added another
15 months to their schedule. (cheerful music) Flagler employed
around 4,000 workers who were often
inventing equipment to help them push through
mangrove swamps and coral rock and build across waterways. The company installed a
headquarters in the Middle Keys called Camp Number 10, in
what is now known as Marathon. Flagler had forbidden
alcohol at the work camps, so a ship named Senator
opened as a bar and a brothel. By 1908, the track
extended from Miami to Knights Key dock in Marathon. Here, Flagler's steam
ships could meet passengers and whisk them away
to Key West and Cuba. Tourism remained at the
forefront of Flagler's plans. - Henry Flagler connected not
only the Keys to the mainland, but he developed resorts
up and down the Keys. - [Narrator] But in 1907,
there was a problem. Flagler had been dredging
material from the ocean floor to create land for the
final station at Key West, but the Navy swiftly
put a stop to this. Flagler ordered all work
south of Knights Key stopped. (melodious music) The company laid off workers. It was a nerve-wracking time. Krome, tired of playing
second fiddle, quit. For nearly two years, Key
West and Flagler's crew waited to see if they would
get a connection to the rest of America. President Theodore Roosevelt hadn't wanted to
overrule the Navy. - It finally ended,
just all of a sudden. - [Narrator] Flagler
won the standoff. South of Marathon,
engineers and workers had the massive task of
building four bridges across seven miles of ocean to take the line the rest
of the way to Key West. That same year, the chief
engineer on the project died. The company begged Krome
to return, and he did, so that an ailing Flagler could
see the project completed. (bright music) - On January 22nd, 1912, Henry Flagler got aboard his
private car, the Rambler, and came down to Key West. - That's what they
opened in, in 1912. It wasn't really complete now. - [Narrator] The first
passengers rode across the many bridges in amazement, nothing on either side of
the tracks but miles of sea. Krome had made sure that
his 82 year old boss made it to Key West. "Now, I can die
happy," Flagler said. Finally, the Keys were
connected to the mainland. The railroad brought
immediate changes. - Mail arrived every
day, eight o'clock, it brought this consistency. And a lot of the communities
began to move away from the edges of the island
and closer to the railroads. Tavernier is a perfect
example of this. You didn't have to worry so much and life wasn't such a struggle. - [Narrator] Tourism did not
take off as Flagler had hoped, but one local lifelong
Key West resident remembers stowing away in
one of the train's box cars. - So, about nine o'clock, a
little friend group of us, we used to sit in the
corner of Duval Street, and then all of a
sudden, this guy come, he say, "Tonight is a
big train going north and full of pineapple that
he had come from Cuba." We look at each other,
"Let's go to Miami." (cheerful music) - [Narrator] The band of
friends did get caught, but only once. - They got me off in Marathon, and we all had to get off. So we say, "How're we gonna
get back to Key West now?" (cars rumbling) - [Narrator] In the 1920s, Americans were falling
in love with cars. To encourage people to drive
from Miami to the Keys, work began on Card Sound Road. By 1928, you could
drive to Key Largo. If people wanted to
go further though, they had to take a ferry. - The road would stop, you'd
hop on a ferry with your car, continue on, and then get
back on a road and go. - [Narrator] To
avoid the ferries, people could drive
on railroad bridges, even if that wasn't
strictly allowed. One company even enticed
people to do just this. - [Advertiser] Out to
sea in an automobile, on a road through
the Atlantic Ocean. - And what Chevrolet
was hoping to achieve was saying their ride
was so comfortable that you could forget
using the ferry, you can actually just drive
over the train tracks instead, and you wouldn't
feel any of the bumps because it was
such a smooth ride, so you can forego the
unfortunate ferry ride. - [Narrator] But the most
famous couple to reach Key West in that era, did not arrive
from the American mainland. Ernest Hemingway was
traveling from Cuba with his second wife,
Pauline Pfeiffer, an accomplished journalist
in her own right. While the two met in Paris, the island where they
now found themselves could not have been
more different. It was rough around the edges. It was Prohibition time, a hub for rum-runners like
the notorious Spanish Marie. Hemingway was in on the action, he too smuggled liquor from Cuba and frequented the speakeasy owned by his
friend, Joe Russell. After prohibition ended, Hemingway suggested Russell
call his bar Sloppy Joe's and became one of
its best customers. The men treated
drinking like a mission. By 1931, Pauline's rich uncle had bought the couple a
mansion on Whitehead Street. Hemingway developed a
routine of writing, drinking, and fishing, usually
on his beloved boat, the 38 foot Pilar. Then came Labor Day, 1935, the end of summer,
humid and quiet. In the Upper Keys, visitors at the Caribbee
Colony sipped cocktails. In Key West, Hemingway
hurried to secure the Pilar. As night fell, all of the Keys, especially Islamorada
and Key Largo, hunkered down for a hurricane. The keepers at the
Alligator Reef Lighthouse watched the seas
below in horror, as a wall of water
swept towards land. - People clinging to lime trees, which have, you know,
big, long thorns in them. They're just clinging
to thorns to survive. - [Narrator] Bodies
were everywhere. The entire Caribbee
Colony resort and all its guests vanished. - At that time, the railroad was being converted
to the overseas highway and there were several
hundred World War I veterans working on it. And the supervisor of that did not take the
hurricane seriously at all and did not provide
an evacuation plan until it was too late. Hemingway arrived shortly
after the hurricane and he toured the devastation. - 200+ veterans were
lost to that hurricane, and as a World War
I veteran himself, he came up here and
really took offense to the way things
were being handled. You know, there were delays
in getting medical attention for those who did survive, and ultimately, they couldn't
get personnel in here quick enough to move people
out in body bags and caskets. - He wrote this scathing
essay and he lobbied Congress. - [Narrator] The
writer's passionate words drew national attention to
the hurricane's devastation, the Upper Keys buried their
dead and slowly rebuilt. (melodious music) The overseas highway
was finally completed and all the Keys
were easier to reach. Henry Flagler's railroad
tracks and bridges had been converted into
the bed of the highway. After World War II, which saw a huge Navy
presence and Nazi submarines lurking offshore, sports
fishing became a big draw. Even President Harry
Truman and his wife, Bess, would cast their lines. - We were always blessed
to have a lot of bonefish, and I mean a lot of bonefish. In no small degree, a great population
of tarpon as well. I always mention Ted Williams because in no small way, he
put Islamorada on the map when he started coming down
here in the early fifties. He was as big a name
as there was in sports, and he is also an incredible
bone fisher and tarpon fisher. (melodious music) - [Narrator] And while
most boat captains in the Florida Keys were men, women started earning their
captains' licenses too. Captain Bonnie Smith and
Captain Frankie Albright gained excellent reputations
as fishing guides, as did their sister, Beulah. Over time, the three Laidlaw
Sisters became local legends. (melodious music) By the 1950s, the
Upper and Middle Keys experienced a true tourist boom, and it wasn't just fishing
that attracted people. (water sloshing) - There are more than 2,000
shipwrecks that we know of in Florida Keys' waters, because of the way our reef is
set up around these islands. (melodious music) Art McKee, we
consider him really the father of modern
treasure diving, as well as one of
the first purveyors of recreational diving,
here in the Keys. (melodious music) He definitely sparked
other people's interest in diving treasure. Not a lot of people were
doing it at that time because it was so cumbersome to use standard
diving equipment. But with the open
bottom helmets, there started to be
more interest in diving, so much so that by the 1950s, Florida had to actually
enact new legislation because there was this
craze of treasure diving all throughout Florida. - [Narrator] Another
treasure hunter, Mel Fisher, then discovered an
even bigger haul. The Spanish galleon, Atocha, with gold, silver, and emeralds, worth many millions of dollars. (tense music) Even without Spanish treasure, the Florida Reef with its
spectacular tropical fish was becoming an attraction. - The reefs in Florida are
the only coral barrier reefs we have in North America. They're the only ones we have. (mystical music) They're important because they
provide coastal protection to those of us that live
on these low-lying islands. The 1980s were a difficult
decade in the Florida Keys, from the ecosystem perspective. We started seeing signs
that there was trouble. Establishing Florida Keys'
National Marine Sanctuary really set the mark that
this is a national treasure, this is a special place, and provided a whole
host of protections for these natural resources. - [Narrator] But there
is still work to be done. Fangman recalls an interview
that stuck with her. - I was behind the camera
while a 16 year old, relatively new diver,
was being interviewed. She'd been diving for two years. She was interviewed and asked, "Tell us about your experience
diving these reefs." And she proceeded to describe how she had watched
the reefs decline. Two years, 16 years old, we need to do better than that. And my goal, my hope, is
that when she's my age, she is instead bearing witness to this thing turning around, how we've recovered these reefs. (melodious music) - [Narrator] On Big Pine Key, the National Key Deer Refuge
protects the unique tiny deer only found on that island. And organizations like
Captains for Clean Water are trying to ensure
that the next generation, like Hemingway, can
still fish here. (melodious music) - [Historian] I think
the remoteness of it attracted many writers, and it was a way that
they could really get away from the world that
they normally lived in. - [Narrator] There were many who followed in the
footsteps of Hemingway. - He consciously tried to
apply the rules of journalism to the principles of fiction. You know, short words,
short sentences, short paragraphs,
declarative sentences. - The way he is able to
create a moment in a scene without giving
too much interior. - You know, Hemingway
famously said that a story should be
like an iceberg. 90% of it is underwater
and out of sight. - I think all of that has been a part of his
influence on my writing. He's talking from a certain
time, a certain period, which is not to say I accept
that as as a modern writer, or as a teacher, or as a woman,
but that I take note of it. So, I think that in
terms of Hemingway and his misogynistic
perspective, he's a marker of time. And when we read him now, we get to see what
progress, if any, there has been in literature, what progress there has been
in the way we portray women or people of color. (energetic music) - [Narrator] More writers
arrived in the 1930s. - [Historian] Elizabeth Bishop
was one of our most important 20th century poets. - [Narrator] Bishop, who would
later win the Pulitzer Prize, was just 25 when
she first visited. The New Englander
found Key West exotic. "The town is
paper-white," she wrote. "flake on flake of wood, and
paint the buildings faint." In the depression,
Real estate was cheap. She bought a house and moved
there with her partner, Louise Crane. She knew Pauline
Hemingway, now divorced. The women went out
to Sloppy Joe's, where they danced the
rumba in satin dresses. Another of Bishop's friends was the playwright,
Tennessee Williams. A young musician was also writing the
Keys' very own soundtrack. - I mean, the greatest thing
ever written about Key West is Jimmy Buffett's
song, "Margaritaville". That's the "Getting
lost in Key West" song. - Jimmy was definitely
a part of this time. He came down and
he started playing, and we'd hear him around town. He was our local celebrity. He was part of
that old Key West. - [Narrator] Key West was a muse for a much-loved
children's book author too. - Shel, Shel Silverstein. He was another one that you would see
just everywhere you go. - "There is a place
where the sidewalk ends and before the street begins, and there the grass
grows soft and wide, and there the sun
burns crimson bright." And I think, "God, that
sounds like Key West." (melodious music) I think it's fascinating to have this new cohort of
women writers down here. Judy Blume, and Annie
Dillard, and Anne Bede. After, you know, the
legacy in the seventies of the guys chasing
Hemingway's ghost, Hunter S. Thompson, Tom McQuain. - But I think it's
really interesting that the way Key West works now. It seems to me that it's also this place for readers
and wanna-be readers to go and pay homage to some of the literary
history that's there. - [Narrator] Today, many
of the writer's houses are lovingly cared for. This wasn't always the case. (melodious music) After the boom years
of World War II, the city of Key West slid
into a slow economic decline. The other Keys were
drawing in tourists with fishing, and diving,
and roadside attractions. Even the dolphin who
starred in Flipper. But in Key West,
the party was over. - The Navy was was
pulling out at that point. - I'd moved down in '75. This town was shut down. - [Narrator] Key
West was an island in need of resuscitation. One community decided
to give it a chance. - In the 1970s, we had a big influence
of gay business owners moving down here and
opening businesses, and buying up all the
property and fixing it up. - [Narrator] And in the 1970s, there were few places in America where gay men and women could
live openly without fear. Key West wasn't perfect. One night, a group
attacked famed writer, Tennessee Williams, yet the sense of greater
acceptance was real. - I was a very
terrified young gay man. I wasn't out to myself. I came when it had already... There was a certain
sense of acceptance. (cheerful music) - [Narrator] As Key
West started to pull out of its financial slump, concerned residents saw
another urgent problem. The island's precious
architectural heritage was under threat. Paint was peeling off the
grand Victorian mansions, cigar makers' cottages
were crumbling. - We had a lot of the
gay writers come in and they put their money
in these buildings. - [Narrator] The city got
a much needed facelift. - About 1976, '77, a group of concerned businessmen and the city
commission at the time decided that they wanted
to revitalize Duval Street and Bahama Village itself. It was also an
effort to tie us in more closely to
our Bahamian roots. - [Narrator] The rich and
famous began to take notice of the island's revival. - Then also, actually,
Calvin Klein came down, and the reason why
he loved Key West is because no one bothered him. It was such a
small-type community. It was a magic time. - [Narrator] That magic
revived Key West nightlife. Before long, they took
the party to the streets. - That initial Fantasy Fest, this kind of really inspired a parade that people
just put together with small floats and costumes, and everyone was out on
the streets watching it. But this was not an
international, this
was a local thing. - There were six women
coming down the street, they were wearing
top hats, red shorts, little, tiny, red,
glittery shorts, they had a cane and tap shoes, and they were tapping their
way down the street, topless. And probably, the
youngest in the group might have been 60. They had the routine down and everyone just loved
them, applauded them. - [Narrator] That
local celebration turned into a yearly
tropical festival to rival New
Orleans' Mardi Gras, or Rio's Carnival. Optimism flowed through Key
West like a welcome breeze. The island elected one
of the country's first openly-gay mayors,
Richard Haman. But in the early eighties,
the good times faltered. Its most beloved gay resident,
Tennessee Williams, died, and Key West faced a
sobering new reality. The AIDS crisis. Eventually, this led
to an AIDS memorial and the first Key
West Pride parade. While the gay community could
unite openly on the streets, over in Cuba, people were
thirsting for freedom. (melodious music) - And then, in that time, the Mariel boat lift started, and we were just
getting to the point where our tourist industry
was coming back to life. (melodious music) - [Narrator] Dictator,
Fidel Castro, was allowing Cubans to escape
from the Port of Mariel. Boats left South Florida to
bring back family members and other refugees. (bright music) At this time, tourism
had been picking up, plans were afoot to modernize
the overseas highway with a new and improved
seven mile bridge. Then in 1982, tourist
traffic came to a halt. - Nobody can get
out of the Keys. They're backed up all
the way into Key Largo. It's a 23 mile traffic jam. I called the police chief, he said, "I haven't
heard anything." - This was during
the war on drugs. So, the government
decided to erect a... Basically, a border checkpoint at the top of the Florida Keys. - So, I called the office and got Congressman
Fissel on the phone, and I asked him, I said,
"What is going on?" I said, "We are
getting killed here. People are canceling
reservations." - That border checkpoint created one of the largest
parking lots ever seen. Everybody who's being stopped is being asked to show
their identification as if they were leaving
a foreign country. - My phone's ringing
off the hook, people want to know
what's going on. Why can't they get outta here? And I'd like to know, you know, why you all
are putting this up? - They want to look for drugs, but they're saying that they're
looking for illegal aliens. Of course, this becomes
a international story, and it's great to come
to visit the Keys, but once you get here,
you can't get out. So, the Mayor of Key
West, Dennis Wardlow, they come up with a great plan. - And I said, "Tomorrow at noon, we're going to secede and
become the concrete public. If they're gonna treat
us as a foreign country, we're gonna become
a foreign country." (people cheering)
(melodious music) - [Narrator] Mayor Wardlow
ordered the American flag to be lowered at Key West. As part of the gag, the
New Republic declared war on the United States by hitting a military
serviceman over the head with a baton of Cuban bread. - And right after
that, within a minute, I surrendered, and
I think then I asked for a million dollars
in foreign aid. We raised our flag
and then, you know, everybody, like everything
else, we start celebrating. (energetic music) - [Narrator] The
Florida Keys adopted the Conch Republic flag as
a quirky badge of honor. Later, when Monroe County
Mayor, Wilhelmina Harvey, met the Queen of England,
she presented the Queen with a conch shell. (melodious music) The 1990s ushered in an era
of growth and prosperity. Some travelers took
the scenic route, vacationing in the
city of Marathon or on the quiet
island of Sugarloaf. On Key West, visitors lined up to see the legendary drag shows. The house known as
La Terraza de Marti, where Cuban
revolutionary, José Marti, once gave a stirring speech,
was now called La Te Da, a cabaret where drag
stars sparkle in sequins. - I mean, I have all ages at
my show, in every walk of life. I've had a priest, a
nun, a rabbi, multiples. They all come, they
have a great time. I try not to offend too much. - Do you believe? (crowd cheering) - [Narrator] As the
new millennium dawned, Key West celebrated
gay pride with a flag the length of Duval Street,
one and a quarter miles long. In 2015, the island saw
its first same-sex wedding. And in 2018, Key West
elected Terry Johnston, Florida's first
openly-lesbian mayor. (energetic music) - Come, be who you are, we'll be who we are. (energetic music) - [Narrator] For two centuries, the adventures have unspooled
like colorful threads, sewing together stories
of wreckers and writers, rum-runners and refugees. - It's unlike any place
else you've ever been. It's that simple. (mystical music) - [Narrator] After 200 years, the pull of the
Florida Keys continues like a current in the sea. A home for exhibitions,
parades, contests of all kinds. A literary seminar that
attracts thousands. The sheer beauty of the land continues to inspire books,
television, and movies. - The scenery is so amazing and it's filmed all,
you know, right here. It's amazing to sit there
and watch your home, you know, on screen. (melodious music) - [Narrator] It is an escape to the very edges of our nation. - You're far enough away
that you're at a distance, and yet, you're still
in it, you know? So, you get this
interesting sense of context on the country. (melodious music) - [Narrator] A place
where history is part
of the landscape, an ongoing tale of
restoration and renewal, the railroad's old seven mile
bridge, brought back to life, new generations at the church
built by Sandy Cornish, and the hope it represents. (water gurgling) At the center of everything,
is nature in a starring role, as people try to ensure
the future of the ocean, the fish, the turtles,
and the coral reefs. The Florida Keys will
always be a place for simple pleasures,
key lime pie, the perfect cup of Cuban coffee. (melodious music) And each night, people
gather by the shore to watch the sun
like ribbons of gold as it dips below the horizon. A moment of shared
happiness, uniting them all, from Key Largo to Sugarloaf, Marathon to Mallory Square. - It's hard to tell
a Key West story, it's hard to tell
an Islamorada story, or a Key Largo, or
a Marathon story. This is one long and
one giant community. The writer in me likes to, you know, weave these stories
to tell a bigger story that really are
Florida Keys' stories. (melodious music) - [Announcer] Major
funding for this program was provided by... (melodious music) - [Advertiser] Where there is
freedom, there is expression. The Florida Keys and Key West. - [Advertiser] Cultural,
culinary secrets and global flavors. We have a passion for
blending ingredients and seasonings from
around the world. (melodious music)
