John Jacob Housman Traditional Cache

This cache has been placed with the permission of the Manager, Indian Key Historic State Park.

Access is by boat or kayak. Boats can tie up at a pier while there is a kayak landing a short distance to the North. Hours are 0800 to dusk. A map of the island is available on the park's web site.

Enjoy the history and the exercise in walking the trails. Be certain to visit the grave of John Jacob Housman.

Jacob Housman was one of the most infamously unscrupulous wreckers of the pre-Civil War era. As a youth in the early 1820's, he was shipwrecked off the Florida keys on a trip from New York. While waiting for his ship to be repaired, he observed and soon joined the wrecking industry, concentrating his efforts around Indian Key, which he bought from squatters in 1824.

He had a vision for Indian Key and began to develop it into an island paradise. By 1834 he had laid off streets, expanded wharfs, had cisterns cut into bedrock, bought stores, erected houses and warehouses, constructed a hotel with a billiard parlor and a bowling alley, and had built himself a large home. He brought in topsoil to grow fruit trees and gardens.

To free his island empire from the oversight of the Monroe County courts, he managed to separate Indian Key from the jurisdiction of Key West and Monroe County. In 1836, the Territorial Legislative Council approved his petition to divide Monroe County into two counties with the boundary line at Bahia Honda, about 40 miles to the SW. Indian Key was designated as the county seat of the new Dade County (which included present day Miami area). Housman built a court house on Indian Key and for three years ruled with unchallenged autonomy. He raised a militia to protect the island from the Seminoles, who were again at war (Second Seminole War) with the white settlers. Out of his own funds, but expecting to be reimbursed by the government, Housman paid the 24 militia members, and provided their subsistence and arms.

In King Carlos of the Calusa Indians, by Edd Winn, it is noted that: "In the early 1500s the Spanish soldiers found out that the native Floridians had such powerful bows that they could actually fire an arrow with such force that at close range the arrow would penetrate armor and kill the Spanish soldiers. Many of these soldiers never went back to Spain. They could not often survive being wounded by such an arrow tipped with a fishbone or shark's tooth."

Housman petitioned the Congress a number of times to have Indian Key declared a port of entry so that he would no longer have to take any salvaged ships and cargoes to Key West. Ultimately, his shady behavior caught up with him and in 1838, his wrecking license was revoked over upheld charges of embezzlement. His finances were in serious trouble after that and by March 1840, he had mortgaged the island and most of the buildings. Congress never authorized his reimbursement for the militia and never approved Indian Key as a port of entry. In a desperate attempt to recover financially, he sent a proposal to the Governor and Legislative Council and to the President and the Congress, offering to capture or kill all the Indians of South Florida for $200 each. He further asked the U.S. Congress to grant to him a tract of land in South Florida to start a settlement that would be free to govern itself without U.S. military interference.

Not long after these proposals, and even perhaps as a result, on August 7, 1840, Jacob's empire and island paradise, Indian Key, was destroyed by a marauding band of Calusa Indians who murdered some of the inhabitants and plundered and burned almost every building on the island. By October, Housman had gathered what little he had left on the island and had listed it for sale in Key West. He died in an accident the following spring, attempting to board a wrecked vessel in rough seas. His wife had him buried on the eastern end of what had been his island paradise, Indian Key.