- Articles on Barney Oldfield
- Barney Oldfield Scrapbook Overview
- Oldfield 1906
- Oldfield Suicide Attempt
- Barney Oldfield and Lincoln Beachey
- Barney Oldfield Autobiography - Saturday Evening Post
- Barney Oldfield's 1910 Land Speed Record
- The Vanderbilt Cup
- Oldfield's Late Career
- Barney Oldfield and the Indy 500
- Oldfield - Petersen Collection
- Various Oldfield Races & Items
- Tom Cooper
- Articles on Early Track Racing
- Sigur Whitaker Articles
- Atlanta Speedway
- Miscellaneous Track Races
- 1906 Benefit Race
- Oval Vs. Road Racing
- 24 Hours of Indianapolis
- 24 Hours of Brighton Beach
- AAA Articles
- Driver Profiles
- Ken Parrotte Research
- William Borque
- Yesteryear at the Uniontown Speedway
- Joan Cuneo by Elsa Nystrom
- Automobile Advertising
- Louis Chevrolet
- The First Mile-A-Minute Track Lap
- Non-Championship Oval Track Races - 1905
- The Lost Championship of 1905
- 1908 Track Racing
- Astor Cup - 1916
- Playa Del Rey Board Track
- 40's - 60's Feature Articles
- Early Indianapolis Motor Speedway
- IMS Construction
- Brickyard Personalities
- Good Roads Movement
- Early Indianapolis Auto Industry
- Joe Dawson
- Carl Graham Fisher
- Fisher Automobile Company Ads
- Allison, Newby and Wheeler
- Prest-O-Lite
- Ernie Moross
- 1909 Balloon Race
- Indianapolis Motorcycle Races - 1909
- First Auto Races at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway - August 1909
- Failed 1909 Air Show
- Becoming the Brickyard
- December 1909 Time Trials
- IMS Planning - 1910
- March 1910 Indianapolis Auto Show
- Indianapolis Motor Speedway May 1910
- Indianapolis Motor Speedway Summer 1910
- Indianapolis Motor Speedway Aviation Show - June 1910
- July 1910 Race Meet
- Indianapolis Race Teams - Summer 1910
- September 1910 Race Meet
- Indianapolis Balloon Races - 1910
- First Indianapolis 500 - 1911
- 1913 Indianapolis 500
- Packard Speed Record
- Brooklands
- Dario Resta
- Indianapolis Harvest Classic
- Wheeler-Schebler Trophy
- Early Road Racing
- American Grand Prize
- Savannah
- Glidden Tour
- Pioneers
- Hill Climb Races
- Fairmount Park
- Coppa Florio
- Daytona - Ormond Speed Trials
- Beach Racing
- Horseless Age 1905
- James Gordon Bennett Cup
- Vanderbilt Cup
- Lowell Road Race
- The French Grand Prix
- 1908 - New York to Paris
- Cuban Road Race
- Cobe Trophy
- Obscure Early American Road Races
- The Cactus Derby
- Briarcliff, NY Road Race
- Isle of Man
- David Bruce-Brown Obituary
- A Woman's Ride In A Racing Car
- Mark Dill's Articles
Cocolobo Cay Club
Article Categories
Relevant Content
- Empire Motor Car Company
- The Belond Special
- Indy 500 Pace Car Drivers
- Auburn Museums
- Pace Car Crash!
- ASPAR
- The Blue Crowns
- The First "500" Woman Driver
- More Sauerkraut
- You Ruined my Sauerkraut!
- "The British at Indianapolis" Book Review
- The Twin Cities Motor Speedway
- The Miami 12 Engine
- Thunder At Sunrise - Book Review
- Eddie Rickenbacker Paves the Speedway
- Montauk
- Rickenbacker's Pace Car
- Rickenbacker Buys IMS
- Whitaker on Race Against Time and Death
- The Brickyard Crossing
- The Winningest Driver
- Ferrari
- Carl Fiisher Car Promotions
- Carl Fisher and His Elephants
- Carl Fisher, Master Promoter
- Sigur Whitaker Reviews "Master Driver of the World"
- Bessie Lee Paoli
- 1955 - Year of Tragedy
- Umbrella Mike
- Lucy O'Reilly Schell
- A Jeopardy - Type Question (Paula Murphy)
- The Astor Cup Story
- The Great Zoline Caper
- Sigur Whitaker on Prest-O-Lite
- IMS Radio History
- IMS Pagoda History
- Sigur Whitaker on the Golden Submarine
- The Fulford-Miami Speedway
- Book Review--Barney Oldfield, The Life and Times of America's Legendary Speed King by William F. Nolan
- Cummins, Part 2
- Cummins Special
- The Great Zoline Caper
- Book Review: Mark Donohue, Technical Excellence at Speed
- Why a balloon is painted on the side of a restroom at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway
- Indy Autonomous Challenge
- Book Review: Victory Road: The Ride of My Life by Helio Castroneves
- Polo at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway
- Tradition of the Indianapolis 500 winner drinking milk
- Kissing the Bricks Tradition
- Maude Yagle--Ahead of Her Time
- Speedway, Indiana
- Book Review: The Legend of the First Super Speedway
- The Great Speedway Heist (Almost)
- He Drives A Duesenberg
- The Miami Aquarium Inbox
- Hitting on all cylinders Inbox
- I've Got Your Back
- Book Review: Beast, by Jade Gurss
- The Year Team Penske Did Not Make the Indianapolis 500
- The Long Downward Spiral
- Book Review: Rick Mears Thanks. The Story of Rick Mears and the Mears Gang by Gordon Kirby
- Orville Redenbacher and Tony Hulman
- 1941 fire in Gasoline Alley
- The Newby Oval
- Tony Hulman and the formation of USAC
- How the Indianapolis Motor Speedway became "The Brickyard"
- Book Review: The Legend of the First Super Speedway, the Birth of American Auto Racing by Mark Dill
- Creating a SAFER barrier
- Celebrating 50 years as Team Penske
- Carl Fisher's Turkey Run
- Duesenberg Sets Endurance Test Record
- When Mark Met Roger
- Book Review: Al Unser, Jr., A Checkered Past as told to Jade Gurss
- The Motorcycle Ride
- Wilbur Shaw
- The Duesenberg Days
Search
Featured Article
Image of The Week
By Sgur Whitaker
Carl Fisher was busy with the development of Miami Beach when he, Charles T. Kotcher, and James Snowden were cruising on the houseboat “Zigan” when they came across a small island. Eric Collin described Adams Key in a March 19, 1922, article in The Miami Herald. Its “golden sands stretched a broad, open greensward, rising gradually to an elevated mound, whose summit was crowned with storm-swept oak trees.” Gazing at the site, Charles Kotcher exclaimed “What a marvelous spot for a fishing club! Could you imagine a more ideal setting or one more perfectly suited to our needs. If only we could build a clubhouse on the summit of that knoll.” Both Fisher and Snowden were equally enthusiastic and soon dredges were developing a deep-water channel and wooden pegs staked out the location of the clubhouse.
Charles Kotcher was the largest individual operator in lumber retail in the United States from Detroit. Snowden was involved in the oil and gas industry in Texas and Louisiana. Snowden became interested in Miami Beach in 1915 after moving to Indianapolis and getting to know Fisher.
They decided to build a small, private fishing resort on the 77-acre Adams Key, 28 miles south of Miami accessible only by boat and within a half hour from the finest fishing grounds in the Keys. Cocolobo Cay Club was named for the Coccoloba diversifolia, a native tree that produces a small reddish-purple fruit, commonly known as the pigeon plum. The club was established as a non-profit social corporation on October 2, 1916, with Kotcher as president, Snowden as vice president, and Fisher as secretary and treasurer. Civil engineer W. E. Brown and Miami attorney Frank B. Shutts served as members of the board of directors. J. L.Conklin built the two-story club house in 1918. It had ten guest rooms, a dining room, and a separate recreation lodge for games and cards. The property was improved with a seawall, a pavilion, a swimming pool and three landing docks each about 50 feet long and 10 feet wide.
While preparing to become President of the United States, Warren G Harding was visited by Miss Ann Rossiter, Carl Fisher’s secretary, with an invitation to the Cocobolo Cay Club. He arrived in Miami Beach in late January 1921, and played a round of golf at the Miami Beach Golf course. He then boarded Jim Allison’s cruiser L’Apache for the Cocobolo Cay Club where he spent two days fishing. He caught eleven fish including two large sailfish, a barracuda, a black grouper, several wahoos, several yellowfin groupers, and a sixty-seven pound amberjack which took him an estimated forty minutes to land. He returned to Miami from his adventure with blistered hands and a sunburned face. The amberjack fish was mounted as a souvenir of the fishing trip.
By 1922, the Cocobolo Cay Club had twenty-two members, all of whom were millionaires and Webb Jay of Chicago succeeded Kotcher as president in 1919. Jay was the developer of the Stewart-Warner vacuum system used in automobiles and motorboats.
In 1922, President Warren G. Harding again visited Cocolobo Cay Club and wrote in the guest book, “Best fishing and best time ever.” A picture memorializing President Harding’s visit was made from a photo taken by Arthur Newby and was hung over the fireplace in the clubhouse. The fireplace was flanked by comfortable chairs.
With the success of the club, plans were made to make further improvements to the property in 1923 including a nine-hole golf course.
On March 15, 1923, James Allison bought a party including President Warren G. Harding, Harding’s personal secretary George B. Christian, Albert Lasker (chairman of advertising agency Lod & Thomas), John Oliver La Gorce (National Geographic Society) to Cocolobo Cay Club on his private yacht Sea Horse. At the time of Harding’s visit to Cocolobo Cay Club, it was one of the most secluded clubs in the country. It was arranged for Captain Charles H. Thompson to take Harding fishing. Thompson’s charter fishing boat was known to take English lords, dukes and French nobility on fishing trips. While the Cocolobo Cay Club was a wonderful place for the president to escape the pressures of his office, it was equipped with a wireless radio to call Webb Jay’s residence every morning at 9:30 and 11:30, and an evening call at 5:30 p.m. In case of an emergency, there was a plan to call at 1:30 a.m. which was never used.
In the late 1920s, the Cocolobo Cay Club had 46 members including U. S. Senator Albert Fall, T. Coleman DuPont (president of E. I. du Pont de Nemours), Harvey Firestone (Firestone Tire & Rubber), professional boxer Jack Dempsey, Charles F. Kettering (founder of Delco and research head of General Motors), Frank Seiberling (co-founder of Goodyear Tire & Rubber), and humorist Will Rogers. With the stock market crash on Black Tuesday 1929, some of the members couldn’t pay their dues.
The Great Depression was not kind to Cocolobo Cay Club and it fell into disrepair. Gar Woods, a truck and tractor manufacturer who gained fame as a boat racer, was responsible for its revival in 1934. He purchased the property in September 1937 from foreclosure for $54,000. While Woods owned the club, President Herbert Hoover and his family visited it.
The Club was sold by Woods in 1954 to a consortium of investors headed by Florida banker Bebe Rebozo. In 1954, it was renamed the Coco Lobo Fishing Club. It was visited by John F Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon while they were senators. It was also visited by Senators Herman Talmadge and George Smathers.
After being badly damaged by Category 3 Hurricane Betsy in 1965, it was acquired by the National Park Service for $550,000 in a bill signed by President Lyndon Johnson The club burned down on December 21, 1974. Today it is a day-use area as part of the Biscayne National Park. Two Park Service families reside on the island.
***
In 1938, Fisher started developing the Caribbean Club on Key Largo. Like the Cocolobo Cay Club, it was a fishing club for men but this time of modest means. The property included a small hotel, restaurant and bar. The club didn’t open until January 28, 1940, six months after Fisher’s death. In 1946, the Caribbean Club became famous for the “on location” filming site for the 1948 film Key Largo. Only the exterior shots were done on the island. The rest of the film was shot in the Warner Brothers studio. In March 1955, the club was the scene of a deadly fire which killed a young woman and badly burned a New York doctor. Although not definitively determined, it is believed the fire was caused by a smoldering cigarette. The club was the filming location for the Netflix original series Bloodline. It is the oldest bar in the Upper Keys.
If you know of someone who would enjoy this article, please forward it to them. If someone sent this to you and you would like to be added to my subscriber list, please let me know at sigurwhitakerbooks881@gmail.com.