Florida Memory is administered by the Florida Department of State, Division of Library and Information Services, Bureau of Archives and Records Management. The digitized records on Florida Memory come from the collections of the State Archives of Florida and the special collections of the State Library of Florida.
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Listen: The Blues ProgramOld bat tower on Sugarloaf Key
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Richter C. Perky, a financier from Kansas City, Missouri, built a large restaurant, gambling casino, cottages and two bat towers on the key, about 1910. The 50-foot tall towers were supposed to house bats, imported from Cuba, to eat up the local population of mosquitoes. Two batches of bats disappeared as soon as they were released. Bat Tower was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. It later toppled over on September 10, 2017 in the devastating winds of Hurricane Irma.
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