Crane Point Museum & Nature Center

ABOUT THIS PLACE

A nonprofit was formed in 1976 to save this land, and what it saved is a block of tropical hardwood forest that has never been cleared, sitting between the highway and the water in the busiest part of the middle Keys. Two houses stand in it. The George Adderley House was built about 1903 by a Bahamian settler out of tabby, a concrete made from burned shell, and it is the oldest house outside Key West in the Keys; it is on the National Register. The Crane House was put up in 1954 by Francis and Mary Crane, who bought the property in 1949. The Museum of Natural History of the Florida Keys holds Calusa material, coral reef dioramas and the wildlife of the islands, and a children's museum has saltwater lagoons and touch tanks. The Marathon Wild Bird Center, opened in 1998, treats injured birds on the site. Nature trails run through the hammock