The First County Seat of Dade County Is a Ghost Town

Florida Keys Road Trip | October 7, 2026

Hey Keys lovers! Before Miami, before Fort Lauderdale, before any of it, somebody had to pick a county seat for Dade County.

They picked an eleven-acre island in the Atlantic off Islamorada.

In 1836 it had warehouses, a hotel, a store, a wharf, families, a doctor and a post office. It was the business center of the Upper Keys.

Today there is nothing on it but coral rock, agave, a few foundation lines in the ground, and an observation deck.

And since April, there has been no way to get onto it at all, which is the part we want you to know before you plan a morning around it.

More on that below. First, the story, because it is one of the strangest in the Keys.

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❓ Keys Trivia

In 1836, the county seat of Dade County was not Miami.

Where was it?

Answer at the bottom of the newsletter.

📣 The Mile Marker Roundup

October is the sweet spot. Water still warm, crowds still thin, and the island chain has not yet turned into late October, which is a different newsletter entirely.

North to south.

🌳 MM 102, Key Largo: Dagny Johnson Hammock A paved loop through one of the last big stands of West Indian tropical hardwood hammock left in the country. Shaded, quiet, flat, and about twenty minutes if you walk it briskly. Most people driving past have no idea it is there. Directions →

🏺 MM 82, Islamorada: Florida Keys History & Discovery Center If this week's story grabs you, this is where to go instead. Upper Keys history under one roof, including the wrecking era and the island we are writing about. Air conditioned, which in the Keys counts as an amenity. Directions →

🧜 MM 82, Islamorada: The Lorelei You know the big mermaid sign. Bayside, open air, sand underfoot, live music most of the day and a sunset that people applaud. Go for the late afternoon, not the dinner rush. Directions →

🏛️ MM 50, Marathon: Crane Point Sixty-odd acres of hammock and trails in the middle of Marathon, with the Adderley House on it, a Bahamian-built home from the early 1900s that is one of the oldest surviving houses outside Key West. There is a museum and a bird center too. Directions →

☕ MM 15, Sugarloaf: Baby's Coffee A roadside coffee roaster that has been on that stretch forever, with a parking lot full of people who all stopped for the same reason. Last decent coffee before Key West, first decent coffee on the way home. Directions →

🌺 MM 0, Key West: The Garden Club at West Martello A Civil War era brick fort on Higgs Beach that the Key West Garden Club turned into a garden. Orchids, bromeliads, brick arches, and almost no tourists. Donation at the door. It is the most peaceful twenty minutes on the island. Directions →

🌴 Partner Spotlight

October Is the Quiet Secret

Ask somebody who comes down every year what the best month is and a lot of them will say this one.

The water is still bath-warm from summer. The crowds have not arrived. Rates are still near the bottom of the year. And the light in October starts doing that thing it does in the fall, where everything looks slightly better than it did in August.

The island chain in early October is close to the version the locals keep for themselves.

FloridaKeysResorts.com can help you compare places to stay from Key Largo to Key West, with nobody taking a commission out of the middle.

See Florida Keys resorts →

🧩 Deep Dive

Eleven Acres and a Very Short Boom

Here is a sentence that sounds made up.

In 1836, the county seat of Dade County, Florida, was an island smaller than most shopping center parking lots. Eleven acres of coral rock in the Atlantic, about seventy eight miles up the chain from Key West.

Indian Key.

To understand why, you have to understand what the Florida Keys ran on back then. Not fishing. Not tourism. Salvage.

Ships coming up from the Gulf had to thread the reef, and a lot of them did not make it. When one went aground, licensed wreckers raced out to it, and whoever arrived first negotiated with the captain and claimed a cut of the cargo. It was legal, it was regulated, and it was enormously profitable.

A man named Jacob Housman set up shop on Indian Key specifically to compete with Key West, which controlled the business and the court that settled the awards. He built the whole operation himself on a private island. Warehouses. A wharf. A store. A hotel. Housing. He got the county seat designated there in 1836, which put the paperwork of an entire county on a sandbar he owned.

For a few years it worked. Several dozen people lived on eleven acres with imported soil, a cistern system, and by some accounts a bowling alley, out in the middle of the ocean.

A doctor and botanist named Henry Perrine moved his family there and began experimenting with tropical plants he hoped to turn into American crops. Agave. Sisal. Things that would grow in the Keys and nowhere else in the country.

Then in August 1840, during the Second Seminole War, the island was attacked and burned. Perrine was killed. The survivors got off by boat. The settlement was never rebuilt.

Housman lost everything and died not long after, and he is buried out there.

That is the whole arc. Boom to gone in under a decade.

What makes it worth knowing about is what is left, which is almost nothing and somehow still legible. The street grid is faintly there. Foundation lines show in the rock. There is an observation platform for the view. And Perrine's agave is still growing on the island, nearly two centuries after he planted it, which is the detail that gets people.

No buildings. No snack bar. No guide unless you bring one.

Eleven acres, a trail, and the outline of a town that lost.

🚧 You Can't Go Right Now

This is the part we would want somebody to tell us.

Indian Key Historic State Park has been closed to the public since April while contractors rebuild the dock. The work was slated to take up to six months, which means it may be reopening around now, or it may not be. There is no landing without that dock, so closed means closed, including by kayak.

So before anybody books a charter or straps a boat to the roof: call the park or check the state park page for the current status. Do not take our word for it and do not take a tour operator's word for it either.

If you are in Islamorada this month and wanted this, here is the honest substitute. The Florida Keys History & Discovery Center at mile marker 82 covers this era properly, including the wrecking trade and the island itself. Twenty minutes there will make the story land harder than standing on hot rock would have.

And if you want to go the moment it opens, stay on this list. We will tell you the week it happens, because we are going too.

📖 One More Thing

Lost in the Keys: Mile Marker Thoughts came out last week.

It is about this drive. The bridges, the bars, the stops you mean to make and the ones you make by accident, and what goes through your head on a road that is mostly water.

Thank you to everybody who picked one up in the first week. The notes that came back have been the best part.

Get the book → Lost In The Keys

🍹 Four Things We'd Tell a Friend

Call before you drive anywhere in the Keys this time of year.

October is when things close. Parks get maintenance, restaurants take their annual two weeks, and boat tours go on reduced schedules. A sixty second phone call is worth ninety miles of driving.

Make Islamorada the day, not the stop.

History center in the morning, lunch and a beer under the mermaid sign, sunset from the same chair. That is a full day and you barely move the car.

Crane Point is the one people skip.

It is in the middle of Marathon, behind a shopping center, and it does not look like anything from US-1. It is sixty acres of hammock with a hundred-year-old house in it.

Late October is a different trip.

If you are planning the end of the month, know that Key West turns into Fantasy Fest and the whole island books up and changes character. Some people plan their year around it. Others would rather be anywhere else. Decide on purpose instead of by accident.

🕰️ Lore & Legends

The Richest Town in America Was Built on Shipwrecks

Indian Key lost its fight with Key West, and it is worth knowing what it was fighting.

In the middle of the 1800s, Key West was, by a lot of accounts, the wealthiest city per capita in the United States.

Not from fishing. Not from cigars, not yet. From salvage.

The reef did the work. Ships hit it regularly, and a licensed fleet of wreckers made a living pulling cargo off them. A federal court sat in Key West to decide how much each salvage claim was worth, which meant the money and the decisions both lived in the same town.

When a wreck was spotted, the cry went up on the waterfront and men ran for their boats. First captain to the ship negotiated the terms.

It built the houses you now pay to tour. Those big widow's walks on the old homes in Old Town were not decoration. They were for watching the water.

And then it ended, on purpose. The government built lighthouses along the reef through the second half of the century, ships stopped running aground, and an entire economy quietly went away.

Progress put the whole town out of business.

They kept the houses.

✅ Trivia Answer

Indian Key.

Eleven acres in the Atlantic off Islamorada, designated the first county seat of Dade County in 1836, burned in 1840, and never rebuilt.

Miami would not be incorporated for another sixty years.

The county seat it replaced is now a state park, currently closed for dock work, where the agave the island doctor planted in the 1830s is still growing.

If you have been out to Indian Key back when you could land on it, hit reply and tell us about it. We would guess kayak, and we would guess you got wet.

And if you have not, hold the thought.

There is a specific feeling you get standing on a street that is not there anymore, on an island nobody could make work, with the highway visible a mile away and completely silent.

The Keys are full of places that made it.

This is the one that didn't, and it is still out there, waiting for a dock.

Until next week, keep your windows down and your watch off.

The Florida Keys Road Trip Team

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