By the summer of 1935, approximately seven hundred men were living and working in federal camps in the Upper Keys.
Camp 1 occupied part of Windley Key, just north of Upper Matecumbe across Snake Creek. Wooden barracks, supply buildings, and a mess hall stood on the flat coral surface among cleared ground and mangroves.
Farther south, Camps 3 and 5 occupied Lower Matecumbe Key. The island was longer and narrower than Windley Key, a strip of coral and vegetation running between the Atlantic Ocean and Florida Bay. In places, the distance from one shore to the other was only a few hundred yards.
The camp buildings were temporary structures erected for a rotating federal workforce. Wooden framing supported canvas, tarpaper, screening, and other materials suited to the heat of the Keys and the practical requirements of temporary housing. Barracks, kitchens, administrative buildings, storage areas, and work facilities formed small communities along the developing highway corridor.
Water was never far away.
On Lower Matecumbe, some of the camp structures stood near the Atlantic shore, with Florida Bay only a short distance in the opposite direction. From portions of the island, both bodies of water could be seen from the same stretch of ground.
Most of the men were veterans of the World War.
They had served during 1917 and 1918 and returned to civilian life during the years that followed. By the beginning of the Great Depression, many were among the millions of Americans struggling to find steady employment.
Their relationship with the federal government had also been shaped by the issue of veterans’ compensation.
Congress had authorized adjusted-service certificates in 1924, but payment was deferred until 1945. As economic conditions deteriorated during the Depression, thousands of veterans began demanding earlier payment.
In the summer of 1932, veterans from across the country traveled to Washington as part of what became known as the Bonus Army. Many brought their families. Encampments appeared around the capital, including a large settlement near the Anacostia River.
The demonstrators wanted Congress to authorize immediate payment of the certificates.
The effort failed.
In July, federal troops cleared the principal encampments. The confrontation became one of the most visible episodes of the Depression and ensured that the veterans’ economic circumstances would remain a national political issue.
When Franklin Roosevelt entered office the following year, his administration pursued a different response. Federal work and relief programs offered employment to veterans who needed it, placing men on projects around the country.
Some were eventually assigned to the Florida Keys.
Their work there became part of the continuing effort to improve the road connection through the island chain.
The camps on Windley and Lower Matecumbe Keys were established in 1934. Veterans arrived, completed their assignments, and were replaced by other men as the workforce rotated. By the following summer, several hundred were living in the camps at any given time.
The men had not come to the Keys to settle permanently.
They had come to work.
Their days followed the requirements of the project.
Work began early, before the strongest heat of the afternoon. Crews were organized by assignment and supervised by civilian foremen and camp administrators.
The work included the physical tasks required to extend and improve the highway corridor through the Keys. Men handled construction materials, worked around bridge and roadway projects, moved equipment, performed maintenance, and supported the operations necessary to keep the project advancing from one section to the next.
The environment imposed its own routine.
Heat and humidity were constant. Mosquitoes were part of daily life. Coral rock was hard on tools, hands, and equipment. Supplies had to move through the same narrow transportation corridor that served the communities farther down the Keys.
When the workday ended, the men returned to the camps.
Meals were served in the mess halls. Some played cards or wrote letters. Others visited businesses in nearby communities.
Islamorada and the settlements around Upper Matecumbe had existed before the federal camps arrived. Fishing, small-scale commerce, tourism, rail service, and local businesses had already created a permanent population along this portion of the Keys.
The veterans became another temporary population within that existing community.
They spent money in local establishments, traveled between the camps and nearby settlements, and interacted with residents whose families had lived in the Keys for years.
The relationship was not always seamless. The veterans were outsiders, and their numbers were large enough to make their presence noticeable in small island communities. They brought federal payrolls and additional customers to local businesses, but they also brought the ordinary tensions that followed the arrival of several hundred temporary workers in communities much smaller than the workforce itself.
Most of the men expected eventually to leave.
Their connection to the Keys came through the federal program and the work assigned to them.
The camps therefore had their own rhythm.
Men arrived and departed. Crews changed. Assignments shifted as sections of the highway project advanced. Meals were served, payrolls processed, supplies delivered, equipment repaired, and the next day’s work organized.
The barracks were temporary because the workforce was temporary.
The men were there as part of a federal project that had brought them hundreds of miles from the cities and towns where many of them had lived before the Depression.
For some, the work represented their first steady income in years.
For others, it was one more stop in a longer effort to find stability after military service and economic hardship.
By August 1935, the camps had been operating for nearly a year.
Camp 1 remained on Windley Key.
Camps 3 and 5 remained on Lower Matecumbe.
The men continued working along the highway corridor.
The Archivist recorded their presence because the camps had become part of the human geography of the Upper Keys.
Several hundred veterans were living there when the final days of August began.