The practice of “wrecking” —salvaging valuables from wrecked ships—reached its height in the Florida Keys during the mid-1800s, when roughly one ship a week foundered on the shoals and reefs stretching from the mainland to the Dry Tortugas. The Key West Shipwreck Museum (www.shipwreckhistoreum.com) tells the tale.
In 1875, native New Yorker George Colby went on a spiritual quest that led him to found the Central East Florida community of Cassadaga, which today claims a large number of psychics and mediums. The Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp (www.cassadaga.org) is a designated Historic District.
Built in 1141 in Segovia, Spain, Miami’s Ancient Spanish Monastery (www.spanishmonastery.com) is the oldest building in the Western Hemisphere. It was taken down, brick by brick, and shipped to the U.S. in the 1920s but didn’t reach Miami until the 1950s. It took 19 months and $1.5 million to put back together again.
South Florida was so cut off from the rest of the state in the late 1800s that a “barefoot mailman” was obliged to alternate rowing and walking along the sand beaches between Palm Beach and Miami to deliver mail. The roundtrip took six days and 136 miles. A stone statue honoring these hardy postal workers is displayed at the Hillsboro Lighthouse (www.hillsborolighthouse.org/bfmn).
