Geologically, Windley Key, like the rest of the Florida Keys, dates back to the formation of the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains. More recently, coral reefs were formed during the Sangamon interglacial period, about 100,000 years ago, when the sea level was some 20 to 30 feet higher than it is today. 

     The Florida Keys were forests of rapid-growing branching corals, massive shoals of shifting sand, plus many small corals and sediment-producing algae. Windley Key was one of the tallest reefs, along with Lignumvitae Key and a small knoll on Key West. During the Wisconsin Ice Age the sea level dropped, exposing and killing the coral reefs making the islands that we live on today. One can stand in the quarry's bottom and view millenniums of time represented by the vertical walls, just as one can by passing through the Marvin D. Adams Waterway in a boat. Different corals grow at different rates and the growth depends on nutrients, sunlight and other factors. The side view represents a forest of corals filled in with other carbonate items. 

     Windley Key was once two islands, shown in the 1870 U.S. Census as the "Umbrella Keys." The census showed John and Matilda Saunders and their two children, Hattie and Mary, as the only residents. John was listed as a farmer. A few years earlier, A. D. Bache had shown it as "Windley's Key" on his 1861 U.S. Geodetic Survey. It is believed that Windley had been an early settler. 

     Charles Smith surveyed the island in 1872, showing it as one land mass of 225.04 acres. Benjamin Russell homesteaded 127.45 acres in 1885 and the Jacksonville, Tampa and Key West Railroad received the remaining 97.59 acres in 1895. 

     The Umbrella Keys became one island when Henry Flagler's railroad crews filled the shallow space between the two islands around 1906-1907. If you look carefully, you can see that the bay swings in very close to the highway in one place between the quarry and the Holiday Isle parking lot. 

     Considerable quantities of rock fill were needed by the railroad to fill in Snake Creek, Wilson's Channel (Whale Harbor) and Indian Key Fill. A community of Quarry, Florida existed during the railroad construction days. 

     At first, the rock was simply used for fill using a steam shovel for extraction. Later, it was discovered that the coral rock could be sliced and polished for use as decorative stone. Slabs were extracted by drilling holes in them close together and breaking them away from the walls. This was the method that John Rowe used for the Orr Rock Company. Later, the Keystone Company used a chiseling machine to make smoother cuts. 

     Three separate quarries subsequently operated in the Windley quarry complex: The Windley Quarry, the Flagler Quarry and the Russell Quarry. Flagler reportedly paid the Benjamin Russell family $852.80 for the area. 

     Flagler's railroad dominated Windley Key in the early years, but when researching these early years, the only locally written data I found was a Miami Metropolis Newspaper article on May 15, 1908: "W. T. MCDONALD AND LITTLE SON KILLED IN A FRIGHTFUL DYNAMITE EXPLOSION." The Jacksonville Florida Times-Union printed many articles about the community of Quarry and its steam shovels. In its time, it was evidently a thriving railroad community. Later railroad and highway maps indicate that the community living center was located south of the actual quarry between the old State Road 4A and the present US-1 highway. 

     Near the northern rim of the southernmost or Windley quarry, stands the gaunt and rusted remains of the "channeling machine," which is the apparatus used to chisel two narrow, criss-crossed grooves into the fossilized coral. My firsthand knowledge of this mechanical workhorse comes from Charlie Cale, Jr., Cecil and Carl Keith, whose father operated the Windley Quarry for Mizner Industries during and after railroad times. (Mizner was the only business listed on the 1928 brochure.) Charlie Cale, Sr. came to Miami from South Dakota in 1899 with his father and grandfather and he eventually found work in the Windley Quarry. Time marched on, and Charlie, Sr. married Alice Moore, whose brother Lewis also accompanied the family to Windley Key to operate the quarry. In 1934, a black Bahamian known only as J. P. jumped ship, swam ashore and joined the quarry work force. 

     Day after day Charlie, Lewis, and later J.P. would control the gas-powered channeling machine. The motor rapidly raised and lowered two sets of parallel-hardened chisels and propelled the entire rig along its tracks. Two vertical parallel channels about six inches deep would be chiseled in each run down the tracks. At the end of each run, the machine would be moved back to the beginning, the chisels set about six inches deeper, and the machine placed in gear for another pass. This was repeated many times until the channels were from eight to ten feet deep. Salt water was pumped into the channels to keep them clean of debris. 

     When sufficient channels were cut in one direction, the entire machine and its tracks would be repositioned to cut at right angles to the first pattern of channels. This would produce a criss-crossed, or checkerboard pattern. Driving wedges into the grooves at the top and bottom from the exposed sides then separated huge rectangular blocks of fossilized coral. Sometimes dynamite had to be used along the bottom edge if it could not be chiseled. Each slab would weight up to ten tons. The coral blocks were then transported to the Quarry railroad siding for shipment to Miami. A finishing plant located at 7th Street and 7th Avenue would produce the end product. 

     At this time, Lenoy Russell operated a hotel on Snake Creek that was leased as a Federal Emergency Relief Administration office for the WW I veterans who were building the newly proposed highway bridges to Grassy Key in 1934-35. Across the railroad, on Snake Creek, the Dillon family operated the Snake Creek Lodge, which consisted of a house and five fishing cottages.  South of that lived the Robert's family. Reggie Roberts was a renown fishing guide. His son Charles and daughter Marlene still live in the area and are constant source for historical research. All the above lost everything in the 1935 Hurricane.

     After surviving the 1935 hurricane aboard the relief train at the Islamorada depot, Charlie Cale rebuilt the family home and rented space to Lewis and Ellen Moore until their wooden Red Cross house could be built. The Cale house was about where the present main entrance gate to the park is located. With the railroad destroyed, the quarried slabs were transported by truck to Miami for final finishing. Plantation Key also had seven of the concrete Red Cross houses. 

     Work at the quarry ceased during WW II. Charlie moved his family to Miami, doing a stint as an explosives expert in the Bahamas, constructing emergency landing fields for the U.S. government. 

     Once the war was over, quarrying began again at the Windley quarry. Bob Miller of Key Largo was the superintendent of Sailing (brother of Elder Statesman Bernard) Baruch's Keystone Art Company in Miami and made routine visits to the quarry from 1945 to 1951. The specific design, precision-cutting and polishing was done at the Miami plant. An example of this product is the outside fascia covering the Burdine Building in downtown Miami. Closer to home, and a much earlier example, is the Hurricane Monument in Islamorada. Architects refer to these thinly cut veneer pieces of rock as "ashlar rock." 

     Chester Flancher of Plantation Key managed and operated the channeling irons for the Key Largo Stone Quarries, Inc. from 1965 until it closed in 1968. During this period, the quarry also had a finishing mill with giant rock saws and necessary polishing equipment on site. 

     On November 10, 1979, the F.E.C. Railway sold the property for six multi-story condominium buildings. The three quarries were to be flooded for "water features." Spearheaded by Alison Fahrer, 1,200 Keys residents and 25 organizations, the State was petitioned to acquire the land, which it purchased in 1986. 

     A significant Windley Key landmark is the Theater of the Sea. Phelps McKenney leased the old rock quarries and began construction in 1940. World War II came along and stopped his work just as it did in the Keystone Art's quarry to his north. McKenney opened his marine theater in 1946 and he and his family have continued daily dolphin shows 365 days a year since. 

     Just north of the Theater of the Sea was "Wimpy's" whose real name was Howard Whibby. It was just a shack and a small pier. Wimpy came to Tavernier as a member of the U.S. Coast Guard in WW-II. He married Ethel of Georgia and they shrimped in Tavernier Creek. They would catch shrimp at night in the channels and keep them alive in traps at the end of his small pier. Then they purchased property on the bayside of Windley Key and opened a Bait, Boats and Tackle shop.

     Wimpy's competition was Estes Fish camp which technically began in Wilson Channel (Whale Harbor) but with time the mangroves attached it to Windley Key. All these post WW-II businesses include Ocean View Inn were rebuilt after Hurricane Donna. Most were moved slightly to a more favorable elevation.

     Following the pattern of the Upper Keys, it took time and tourists to bring significant additional development on Windley Key. Ed Goebel started the Holiday Isle complex with just five units. From there is grew and grew with dredge and fill providing more  space. The main quarry complex is a Florida State Park Service geological site.