Nature Preserve in Marathon

Carol on the Adderley Road

The Crane Point nature center is not about whooping cranes.  A family named  Crane owned a large piece of property on Marathon Key in the 1950’s and sold it to the foundation to keep it as a living nature preserve.  It’s a very nice place, with a couple of miles of walking trails, plenty of examples of native Key’s species of plants, trees, birds – even spiders and butterflies.

Martha's shirt makes a good back drop

There is an area that preserves the home of Bahamian pioneers named Adderly who settled this wild land in the early 1900’s.  His home was built of ‘tabby’ – a mixture of burnt seashells and rocks, gravel and cement-like sand. The house is in reasonably good shape and still stands in the nature preserve.  People from the Bahamas settled here after the US made it illegal for non-US-residents to salvage shipwrecks along the keys.  By moving to the US, the Bahamians kept their income flowing.  Even today the Bahamas, though beautiful, are a very un-hospitable place to earn a living.  There is no earth to farm on or build on as the islands are basically large coral rocks.

We also visited the aviary, where the foundation keeps injured birds until they heal – or it is determined they cannot survive in the wild.  

Tiger Stripe Butterfly

Adderley House

Chinese Fan Palm