Windley Key

About 7 miles from Community Harbor by road, headed south along the Overseas Highway, sits Windley Key.  By bike the distance takes about an hour for us to travel from our marina. Cars and trucks, traveling south bumper to bumper, zip past the bike trail.  Most are headed to Key West.  Under the hot Tropical sun, a bike ride proves tolerable only because of a cooling sea breeze that blows in from the east.

 

We took the day Friday to travel down the highway in order to visit Windley Key Fossil Reef Geological Park.  Located at mile marker 84.9 on the Overseas Highway (miles are counted starting at mile marker 0 in Key West), the park is the site of three quarries.  Also of note, the park has on site the highest ground elevation in the Keys (18 feet above mean low water).  During the great Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 (at that time the practice of naming hurricanes had not been introduced) hundreds died in this part of the Keys after 24 feet of water washed ashore virtually submerging the entire land mass.  At that time, the quarry at Windley Key was active in support of a coastal highway project being built during the Great Depression by World War I veterans.  Entire work camps disappeared during the storm.

 

The Windley Key Quarry was first established in order to provide rubble stone for use in the construction of railroad beds for the Key West extension of Henry Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railway.  Flagler purchased the land, and excavated a limestone / fossilized coral material called Key Largo limestone.  (For a great book on the construction of Flagler’s overseas railroad read Last Train to Paradise by Les Standiford.) Later, the quarry started producing slabs of “Keystone” for use as a veneer in building construction.  The Vizcaya home of James Deering used this type of stone in its construction.  Finally, as land prices in the Keys climbed in value the quarry closed, and in 1960 the property was bought by the state as a Geological park.

 

A quick comment on the stone; It is beautiful.  As the coral fossilized into limestone the old coral patterns were to remain in the stone.  Looking at the stone, it is easy to pick out brain coral, fan coil, conch shells, and a myriad of other sea life in the stone face.  It has a soft beige color, and is very light weight.  Walking the quarry, we walked along 8 foot walls of the stone where excavation once split giant slabs of the stone for construction.

 

Beyond the three quarry areas, the park has a mile and a half of trails through the Hammock.  (Hammocks are subtropical hardwood stands located at higher elevations along the keys).  A rich variety of canopy trees provide a cool cover, a perfect escape from the harsh tropical sun.  Although birds were scarce during our hammock walk, butterflies and a rich variety of trees kept us more than entertained.  Perhaps the most interesting thing about the trees is that they have no tap roots.  The variety of trees have all developed large horizontal root systems that clutch the underlying stone and have adapted to the water scarcity of growing on rocks.