Stories of Adams Key

The modern history associated with Adams Key begins with the co-founder of the Prest-O-Lite Company and the Indianapolis Speedway, Carl Fisher. Fisher purchased his first Miami home in 1910 as an escape for what in some parts of America prove to be harsh winter months. He would also create Miami Beach, literally, developing the property by filling in and covering up the mangrove shallows until buildable real estate appeared.

Fisher would go on to purchase Adams Key with partners Charles W. Kotcher and Jim Snowden. The group would build a two-story structure with 10 rooms and a dining room for use as a lodge. A separate two-room building was also built and utilized for playing cards and other games. The retreat would become known as the Cocolobo Cay Club and would ultimately be visited by a series of presidents, including Warren G. Harding.

The Wall Street Crash of 1929 took its toll on Fisher and his partners’ investment. They would sell the island to Garfield Wood in 1934. Garfield “Gar” Wood was a professional speed boat racer and the first man ever recorded achieving a speed greater than 100 miles-per-hour. Wood would retire from boat racing in 1933 and purchase the Adams Key property for use as a private retreat. Fisher would go on to build Key Largo’s Caribbean Club made so famous in the Bogart and Bacall classic movie Key Largo.

Adams Key would be sold again in 1954, this time to Bebe Rebozo, a friend of President Richard Nixon. Nixon would be one of four presidents to visit the island. The others were the aforementioned Harding, Herbert Hoover, and Lyndon Johnson. John F. Kennedy, too, would visit the club, though at the time he was still a Massachusetts senator. Rebozo would sell the 77-acre property to the National Parks Service in the 1960s for $330,000 and it would become part of the Biscayne National Monument, known today as Biscayne National Park. About a decade later, in 1974, the main building once known as the Cocolobo Cay Club burned down. The rest of the property would be destroyed by Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

Historically the island was known as Cocolobo Key, named for a native fruit tree, Coccolobo diversifolia, related to the sea grape. The medium-sized tree produces a small, fleshy fruit favored by indigenous pigeons, among other species, and more commonly known as pigeon plumb.

The island, identified as Adams Key on a U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey dated 1862, is located just north of Caesars Creek. Legend suggests it once served as a base of operations for the pirate perhaps most often associated with the Florida Keys, Black Caesar. What is not accounted for is which Black Caesar it was, as two pirates have claimed the title.

The original Black Caesar was an African chieftain captured and transported across the Atlantic aboard a slave ship. The ship allegedly encountered adverse weather conditions as it began to navigate the Florida Reef and wrecked along the northern Florida Keys. If legend is to be believed, this Black Caesar’s operation modestly began with only the longboat he used to escape the bilging ship on which he had been enslaved.

He would later serve as a lieutenant aboard Edward Teach’s Queen Anne’s Revenge. Teach, most famously remembered as Blackbeard, was executed on site when naval forces led by Lieutenant Robert Maynard boarded the pirate ship in 1718. Black Caesar was captured, tried, and hung in Williamsburg, Virginia for obvious reasons.

Nearly 100 years after the original Black Caesar was hanged, another appears in the form of Henri Arnaut, a child born circa 1765 to slaves belonging to the Arnaut family. The man would rise to power after a slave revolt, steal a Spanish ship circa 1805, embark on a piratical career, and commandeer the name Black Caesar.

Both Black Caesars have been associated with the northern keys and frankly, it is often hard to distinguish where one Black Caesar ends and the other begins. One legend associated with a Black Caesar claims the pirate ordered Spanish prisoners to dig holes on one of the keys to bury treasure. After the holes were dug, so the story goes, the pirate allegedly killed the men and buried their bodies along with the booty.

Where this story gets interesting is when, during an interview with writer Love Dean, Charles Brookfield relayed a story once told to him by Porgy Key’s Israel Jones: “… my first wife's father was working for Mr. Curry on Elliott Key. Mr. Curry had built a house, but he hadn't built a cistern. He built the house first so there would be some rain from the roof of the house to go into the cistern that was alongside the house. My first wife’s father and another man were digging in the sand ridge to build a cistern, to dig the hole. They had the hole almost finished, and they came to some bones, human bones, and they wouldn’t dig, stopped digging. Since the hole was almost finished, Mr. Curry got down there himself with a shovel and threw out the bones, and then he struck something hard and the men stood around to watch and he got three jars of Spanish money. Three clay pots of Spanish money.”

Brad Bertelli is an Upper Keys historian and author of five books on Florida and Florida Keys history. His column will appear every other week in The Reporter. Reach Brad with comments and questions at WhyPanic@aol.com.

This story was originally published January 27, 2017 at 1:52 PM with the headline "Stories of Adams Key."