Famous 1835 Hurricane ... Miami, Key Biscayne, Brickell Hammock, Brickell, Roads Section... A Worst Case Scenario for Miami?

Aren't lighthouses beautiful?

Especially Cape Florida on Key Biscayne

Painted white after the remodeling....

....it stands out against the azure waters.

White pristine Beach.

Bit of sea weed...

IYKYK

Who doesn't love lighthouses?

Below is a picture of the book.

THE BOOK on Key Biscayne.

As a librarian in the Miami area who ran the archives for the City of North Miami Beach Library I got to play with books such as this one often, lost in thoughts and descriptions that carry you away as if you fell into a crystal ball that held a key to the past. I'm a 4th Generation Floridian. My family had a homestead on Whitehead Street in Key West just down the block from the Key West Lighthouse. Alas it doesn't  sit on the waeter on Smathers Beach and it's inland from the Zero Mile Marker but it stood watch over Key West for many years. The Cape Florida Lighthouse was originally built in 1825 just over 100 years ago.

Can you imagine the hurricanes it has witnessed? There are the ones that scrape along offshore and the ones that made landfall. The lighthouse grounds were under 10 feet of standing water during the 1835 Hurricane and it was burned down during the Seminole Wars. It's said to be the oldest standing "structure" in Miami Dade County.

What Miami kid has not swam or played in the shade of the Cape Florida lighthouse? If you know and many of you know and many of yuu have climbed up and looked out at the island, the ocean and the world beyond. The view from the top is stunning. Imagine being in that lighthouse as a lightkeeper during a Major Hurricane? It has happened in 1835.

Hurricane Andrew in 1992 smashed all the beautiful Austrailian Pine Trees down, flattening them with a bit of storm surge on the Southern tip of Key Biscayne. Below are two photos from both the 1926 Miami Hurricane and Hurricane Andrew. Alas no photos exist of the aftermath of the 1835 Hurricane a direct hit on Key Biscayne. They never replanted my favorite pines deemed "invasive species" and replanted with local, natural plants.  Below

https://www.miamirealestateguy.com/history-of-bill-baggs-cape-florida-state-park-on-key-biscayne/

I wish I had taken a picture the day I went for a ride with my brother, shortly after Hurricane Andrew and we stood by the closed off entrance of Cape Florida, all the pines flat like match sticks, a bit of scrub as you can see above from the website I posted. A few racoons played by the dumpster, hungry searching for food. I felt terribly guilty feeling terrible about the devastation at Cape Florida when I knew people had died and many lost everything they had in South Dade. But I felt terrible. Sick to my stomach. There I stood staring at the raccoons thinking this "can't be" it just "can't be" but it was...and it will be again one day.

Northern tip of the eye wall of Hurricane Andrew.

Just touching the Southern tip of Key Biscayne!

Let's look at that book again.

Below is quoted from the book...

...at the site I linked to.

Awesome site.

Awesome book!

"Although the historical telling of the Dubose family on Key Biscayne has idyllic features, John’s tenure as lightkeeper was troubled. The Collector of Customs in Key West was his immediate supervisor, and the two didn’t get along. Food, supplies and mail from Key West to Cape Florida were slow and unreliable, making life uncomfortable for an isolated settlement on an island wilderness, without neighbors. He requested a boat, which surprisingly, had not been contemplated for an island posting. John wrote a letter to a Mr. Pleasonton, the executive in charge of lighthouses: “… the situation of this light is far different from that of any other on the American coast. There is no one so far removed from a settler’s part of the country… where a keeper has to send so far for his supplies, cut off from all civilized society.” Some months later, he got a boat.

To be continued...............