government road

In a moment of geek last week (yeah, I have them sometimes) I was playing with GoogleEarth and getting a bird's-eye-view
of Key West.
I found my current house, the last three places I've lived since I've been on the rock and traced the route I run on my bike workouts which led me to a look at the airport and that's when I found Government Road.
Now, I've always known that Government Road was there but, in all my years here, hadn't taken the time to go down it.
"Hmmm" I thought; a corner of Cayo Hueso I haven't explored; we just can't have that!

Government Road is a paved business that runs (I'm guessing here) about a half mile through mostly undeveloped natural nice-ness and parallel to Key West International across the salt marsh.

At the close end is Little Hamaca City Park and at the far end the road ends at a paintball battlefield. But it was the ruins I discovered in between that piqued my interest.

"What's all this then" I asked myself. Remains of radar towers (lots of them), concrete buildings big enough to warehouse Sherman tanks and something that looked to me
like a bunker.



That's when the light came on. . .
A military installation that just could date back to the
Cuban Missile Crisis.

In October of 1962 I was 10 years old and even though I have real memories of those days, the concepts of naval blockades, evil communists and nuclear armageddon were fairly abstract. I'm not even sure I knew a place called Key West existed.

Anyway, back home later in the day, I did a little homework and sure enough, here was one of the four firing batteries built to defend Key West if the situation between Kennedy and Khrushchev got out of hand.

It's a pretty amazing story actually. . .
On Oct. 20th, 1962 the 6th Battalion's 65th Artillery Unit and their low altitude defense missiles were ordered to move from Fort Meade, Maryland to Key West and in only 9 days, the troops and missiles were deployed and all four firing batteries were operational. (pretty damned quick)

Judging from the map, I'm guessing these are the ruins of Bravo Battery.

So it appears that Key West was loaded for bear in those days. It's got me wondering how weird it could get around here if the United States actually does decide to invade Venezuela.

fly navy - key west

The U.S. Navy's presence in Key West dates back to 1823 when a Naval Base was established to stop piracy in the area.

The base was expanded during the Mexican War (1845 - 48) and again during the Spanish - American War (1898). The battleship Maine (remember the Maine?) sailed from Key West to Havana Cuba where it sank, giving the United States government an excuse to declare war on Spain. At that point the entire U.S. Atlantic Fleet was moved to Key West for the duration of the war.

During World War I (1914 - 1918) the base was expanded again. The project involved dredging the land leased from from the Florida East Coast Railroad Company for construction of station buildings, a hydro generator and barracks. Because Key West offered such easy access to open sea - lanes and usually ideal flying conditions, construction also included a dirigible hangar, three seaplane ramps and a submarine base.
Now known as Trumbo Point, the base's mission, at that time, was to spot and block German ships from reaching Mexican oil supplies while supplying oil to the U.S. fleet.

After the war, the base was decommissioned, most of the buildings were destroyed and the station remained inactive until two years before the United States entered the 2nd World War. Fortunately, the government had retained the property and the base was reopened and designated as a Naval Air Station to support Navy destroyers and PBY aircraft.
After that war had finally ended, NAS Key West was kept alive as a training facility.

By the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), NAS Key West sites included Meachum Field, Boca Chica, Harry S. Truman Annex and Trumbo Point. During the Cuban crisis, NAS Key West flew reconnaissance and operational flights in support of the blockade and reinforced Key West's title as "Gibraltar of the Gulf" as coined by Commodore Porter a hundred
years earlier.

Today, Trumbo Point is used mostly for military housing but is also home to the U.S. Coast Guard Group - Key West, a Naval Research Laboratory, Naval Legal Services Office and the U.S. Army Special Forces Waterborne Operations Division.