Looking at a topo map of Flordia, I noticed 11 evenly spaced items listed as either ‘obstruction - visiable at high water’ and ‘obstruction - awash’
btw wat does awash mean?
the obstructions are 0.56 - 0.57 miles apart forming a straight line from the NW corner of key west and extending towards a wreck (Miss Sandra) but stops about 2.5 miles away.
wtf is this?
my wag is maybe some sort of break water, being so evenly spaced it is man made. I don’t think it was a bridge since the supports are too far apart and it goes nowhere.
There was a railroad at one time, but it was badly damaged in the 1935 hurricane and never reopened. The highway that opened in 1938 used some of the same bridges.
The Key West Extension of Flagler’s railroad only went out to Key West, and then stopped. Dave’s talking about something sticking up to the northwest, out into the Gulf of Mexico, towards Louisiana.
There are 11 of them, and they’re 1/2 mile apart? So the whole chain of them is at least 5 miles long? That’s too big, and too far apart, to be a breakwater. Man, that’s sticking way out there. I’m looking at a DeLorme Florida gazeteer here, which doesn’t picture them.
My guess is that it’s something to do with the Key West National Wildlife Refuge, maybe some kind of boundary markers.
I believe that Flagler originally wanted to build all the way to Cuba. Apparently for a time there was a railroad ferry between the Keys and La Habana, but further bridgebuilding got derailed by the 1935 hurricane.
I don’t know whether anything south of Key West was actually built, was planned in detail, or was simply the next untaken step.
In particular, I don’t know whether the strait south of the Keys is shallow enough for an actual bridge; possibly Flagler figured he could cross that gap when he came to it…
Was there any preparatory work done in Cuba to receive the bridge?
I would doubt it…it’s a good NINETY MILES from Key West to Cuba. A bridge like that would have bankrupted Flagler, possibly even if he’d brought in J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and John Rockefeller to help him pay for it.
The longest noninterrupted span between the mainland and Key West is the Seven Mile Bridge, which I understand is between six and eight miles long.
it does seem to follow the channel somewhat in direction but it is off about 0.75 mi. YOu can see it here http://www.garmin.com/cartography/mapSource/
and selecting the mapsource map viewer “U.S. Topo - East”
a popup window opens - just keep zooming in on the kew west area and you should see it. But it won’t tell you waht those circles are (but they are the obstructions listed above)
It would be in hte wrong direction to go to cuba so I don’t think that’s it
Live in Key West for a bit. There are many many keys, some are no more than a group of mangroves that have grown together. They run pretty much from Key West to the Dry Tortugas. Could that be what you’re seeing?
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