Qualla: Indian Key Historic State Park

Indian Key Historic State Park: Introduction

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. From the air, Indian Key looks like little more than a green smudge in the turquoise water southeast of U.S. Route 1, a few hundred yards off Lower Matecumbe Key. It measures barely eleven acres. Yet this scrap of coral rock once held a hotel, a warehouse, wharves, a post office, and enough political clout to serve as the county seat of Dade County. It was the headquarters of a wrecking empire, the garden of a visionary botanist, and the site of one of the most violent episodes of the Second Seminole War. Today it is an uninhabited ghost town where stone foundations trace the outlines of buildings that have not stood for nearly two centuries.

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Indian Key Historic State Park: The Wrecker King's Island

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. In 1831, a brash young entrepreneur named Jacob Housman purchased Indian Key and set about building a rival to Key West's lucrative wrecking monopoly. Wrecking, the legal salvage of cargo from ships that ran aground on the treacherous reef system of the Florida Keys, was the most...

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Indian Key Historic State Park: A Botanist's Tropical Dream

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. Among the residents drawn to Indian Key was Dr. Henry Perrine, a physician, horticulturist, and former United States Consul in Campeche, Mexico. In 1838, Congress granted Perrine a township of land at the southern tip of Florida for experiments in introducing tropical plants to A...

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Indian Key Historic State Park: The Dawn Raid

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. Just before dawn on August 7, 1840, a war party of Seminole warriors under the leadership of Chakaika landed their canoes on Indian Key. The attackers, believed to have numbered between 60 and 130, came for the well-stocked store and warehouses. They looted and burned nearly ever...

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Indian Key Historic State Park: What the Stones Remember

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. The attack ended Indian Key as a functioning settlement. Housman moved to Key West and died the following year, crushed between two ships during a salvage operation. Dade County's seat moved to Miami in 1844, and the upper Keys were returned to Monroe County. The island's buildin...

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