Cocolobo Cay Club

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.
 
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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.
 
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