Featured Stop: Fort East Martello, State Road A1A, Key West

 Featured Stop

Fort East Martello, Key West 

In addition to its place as a tourist destination and home for some of Florida's quirkiest people, Key West also holds strategic value for the military. Currently, it is home to Naval Air Station (NAS) Key West, which was crucial for reconnaissance and potential defense during the Cuban missile crisis.

Before that, however, its position covering shipping lanes from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico made it home to fortifications designed to contain pirates and Confederate blockade runners. In dealing with the latter, Key West was so important to the North's strategy that the Union kept control of the island through the Civil War, even though Florida was a deeply Confederate state.

While most Key West visitors are familiar with Fort Zachary Taylor, a trip down A1A will take you past another fort-turned-museum, the Fort East Martello Museum & Gardens.

East Martello was built around the time of the Civil War, but never fired a shot in anger. The building itself is well preserved, and you can walk through the casemates and look out the windows to get a pretty good idea of what the gunners would have seen (as long as you ignore the cars driving by).

However, what sets East Martello apart from its bigger brother to the west is that while Fort Zachary Taylor just has the fort and related artifacts, the East Martello houses artifacts and exhibits from many different aspects of Key West history. In fact, you might say that the East Martello museum is as quirky as the island city itself.

When I walked in, I was greeted by the fort's four-legged resident, a cat named Fred who the museum staff told me was over 20 years old. He's a nice cat, if a little hard of hearing.

When I entered the casemates to the left, I saw the gallery of painted carved wood panels created by Key West native Mario Sanchez. The artist, who died in 2005, depicted life in the city during the early 20th Century, with a distinctive reflection of the city's (and his own) Cuban heritage.

Walk across the courtyard to the tower and you'll find the gallery of Stanley Papio, who the museum describes as "a former roustabout, wrestler and welder during the early to mid-20th century." Papio lived in Key Largo, where he turned junk into sculptures. Mailboxes, appliances, furniture, just about anything he could get his hands on became part of his artwork.

From what I read of Papio, he was a hero to Floridians who are sick of condo commandos and overzealous building code ordinances. When he moved to Key Largo in the 1940s, he left junk in his yard, but nobody lived close enough to complain (it was a remote area at the time, as you can see in the Humphrey Bogart movie Key Largo). However, as the keys began to draw newcomers and houses popped up nearby, his new neighbors complained about, well, the junk. Papio's response: turn the junk into art. Later in his life, his work became recognized as artwork.

Back to the museum. The casemates across from the Sanchez gallery hold one of Key West's more otherworldly denizens, the haunted Robert The Doll. If you ever hear somebody exclaim, "Blame it on Robert!" that person has likely been to East Martello.

Robert is a 19th-Century doll who, legend has it, caused all kinds of trouble for his owner. After gathering the blame for years of bad luck, he found his way to the museum, where he continues to be responsible for bad luck. Apparently, you have to ask his permission before you take his picture. If his head is tilted, that is his way of granting permission. If you don't ask for permission, bad things will happen to you, as the letters posted on the wall behind Robert will tell you.

Before fully understanding the procedure, I went ahead and took a picture. I'm not sure if it was Robert's handiwork or biorhythms going out of whack, but two weeks later I slept through my alarm, locked my keys in my car (while it was running) and spilled coffee on the keyboard of my work laptop. Blame it on Robert!

Other exhibits include artifacts from the Florida East Coast Railroad (which once reached Key West), from a convent that was used as a hospital during the Spanish-American War, and from a cigar factory.

Some of the museum exhibits were incomplete and not all were thoroughly explained, but East Martello Museum & Gardens is a fun $6 to spend that is off the touristy beaten path.