Cedar Key, Florida
at the edge of the Gulf of Mexico
The final 20 mile stretch west on Florida State 24 leading into Cedar Key is constructed six feet above the tidal swamp surrounding each side of road. There is no shoulder defining the raised road. Gators, snakes and slithery swamp critters watch my car roll down the two lanes of asphalt; swamp creatures tortured by perpetual hunger.
How Far Down the Block?
Way down the block. Over an hour drive West of I-75, Florida’s migratory route from those fleeing winter in Midwest America.
Why Few People Live in Cedar Key
Cedar Key suffered defeat and humiliation every time the local folk gave progress a try.
The Cedar Key watchtower was erected in 1801. Spanish invaders destroyed the watch tower in 1802.
The U.S army constructed Cedar Key’s fort, hospital and a holding pen for renegade Seminole Indians in 1841. The next year, 1842, a hurricane obliterated the fort and hospital in 1842. The walls of the holding pen collapsed. Freed Seminoles made a run for Florida’s interior, never to return to Cedar Key.
In 1861, a train from civilization chugged down the newly laid track into Cedar Key; linking the goods of the Confederate South to the “port” of Cedar key. Two weeks later America’s Civil War was declared. Cedar Key volunteers boarded the new train, relocating to Jacksonville anticipating a glorious defense against a Union assault.
In early 1862 with the Cedar Key volunteers on guard in Jacksonville, the Union vessel Hatteras sailed around the Southern tip of Florida, drifted into Cedar Key, and torched every ship in harbor. The Union men bombarded all rolling stock in Cedar Key’s rail yard. Then the sailors aboard the Hatteras burned down every Cedar Key building. Before departing, the Northerners destroyed all salt production equipment in Cedar Key.
John Muir, famous American naturalist, before nudist camps were invented, walked into Cedar Key late fall 1867. Muir walked all the way from Kentucky to Cedar Key. Why didn’t he take the train? Maybe the train hadn’t been repaired since the Union’s 1862 destruction of Cedar Key’s railroad yard.
Muir was a curious guy. At 42 years of age, John married for the first time – then spent the next 11 years wandering the boondocks of Alaska, without Louise, his wife.
As Muir trudged the last miles through the bog surrounding Cedar Key, a malarial mosquito bit him. He was dizzy as he walked into town. When Muir gained consciousness some days later, he rolled left and said to his bed-side attendant, “Fuck this place,”
Later that week Muir boarded a sailing boat out of Cedar Key bound for Cuba … rum, cigars and dark-skin women.
In 1889, 33-year-old William W. Cottrell, a nasty man, was elected mayor of Cedar Key. Cottrell’s margin of victory 101 for, none opposed, may have been due to his threat to have his minions kill any citizen voting against him. Mayor Cottrell appointed himself inspector of Customs, a remunerative position as the gay 90’s launched in Cedar Key.
Mayor Cottrell was inept, as well as violent. Particularly when drunk.
Cottrell installed his own band as Cedar Key law enforcement. Personal privacy was disregarded. Drunken revelries by the Cottrell policemen would find townspeople routed from their homes and forced to dance though the streets of Cedar Key at gunpoint.
In Washington, the Secretary of Treasury dispatched the sailing vessel McLANE to Cedar Key. His orders for the sailors aboard; arrest Mayor Cottrell; if he resists, shoot him.
The crew of the warship McLane arrived in Cedar Key armed. They began searching for the mayor.
Cottrell eluded capture, trekking North along the Suwanee River. The cutter McLane stayed in Cedar Key; Mayor Billy made it overland to Alabama.
There he resumed his malevolent behavior. November 5, he was arrested after a bout of drinking that led to a fight with a Montgomery, Alabama restaurateur. Upon release from jail, former mayor Billy Cottrell declared, “I’ll kill that sonofabitch Police Chief.”
Adolph Gerald was the Chief of Police in Montgomery, Alabama.
At just past 11 a.m. the next morning, Chief Gerald spotted Billy riding his horse-drawn buggy. Billy Cottrell stepped from his carriage. Police Chief Gerald raised his double-barrel shotgun and shot Billy twice. There Billy died.
“A BLOODY AND GHASTLY SPECTACLE,” reported the Montgomery Advertiser.
Six years after the McLANE sailors shot Cottrell dead, a September hurricane surged head-on into Cedar Key killing 100 people. All the commercial buildings were knocked to the ground. That same December a fire destroyed all homes of Cedar Key. By 1909 Cedar Keys oyster beds were exhausted. The lighthouse on Cedar Key was abandoned in 1952.
I drove into Cedar Key doing 10 miles over the speed limit. Jimmy Buffett (radio) and I were singing verse three of “Why don’t we get drunk . . . “
Why Cedar Key Appeals To Me
King Neptune Bar inside The Island Hotel has five bar stools, 4 were occupied. Behind the bar, two celebrity photographs were pinned on the wall.
Richard Boone, (Palladin, a 1950’s TV western); an ominous-looking man who spent mornings writing poetry in the lounge outside the Neptune Bar. Jimmy Buffett made a 1983 appearance. Buffett strumming his six string was recalled in detail by our bartender; she was 12 years old in 1983.
The portrait of King Neptune above the bar, looked eerily like the actor Richard Harris, strung out on drugs. The creepy Island House Neptune was fondling three naked teenager girls. Not the sculpted bronze rendering of Neptune that towers above Piazza della Signoria in Florence, Italy.
A husband/wife drinking team from upstate New York and domiciled in Cedar Key for winter occupied bar stools #4 and #5 to my left. “If you’re a writer,” he said, “Don’t tell no one about Cedar Key.” He drained his longneck and said, “Don’t need more people here.”
At last count Cedar Key had a population of 600, down from 900 ten years earlier.
Why you might be nearby?
You were fishing out of the port of Crystal River, Florida, 20 miles south of Cedar Key, when a Gulf of Mexico hurricane capsized your boat. You had your safety gear on; you blew ashore at Cedar Key. There is no other reason you would be nearby.
Local Recommendation
Cedar Key clam and oyster beds eventually came back. It is the only seafood harvested locally.
On Dock Street, a sandbar reaching into the Gulf, several seafood shacks hang over the water.
“What are you having tonight?” asked Corintha from behind her bar at Steamers on Dock Street.
“What’s best?” I asked.
“Clam chowder and oysters, oysters from right here in Cedar Key.”
Across Dock Street, the Sugar Shack candy store has two rooms for rent on the 2nd floor. Each room has a couple of chairs on landing. The landing faces west, overlooking the Cedar Key pier. I brought a bottle of French red wine and didn’t tell anybody where I was.