Cudjoe Key: Lower Florida Keys community and site of military aerostat operations

Early name

Before it acquired its present name, the island was known as Littleton Island.

Military facility and aerostat operations

In 1959 the United States Army established what became known as Cudjoe Key Air Force Station to assist tracking of missiles passing through the Eglin Gulf Test Range. The following year responsibility for the site was transferred to the Air Force. Later the station operated as a detached installation of Homestead Joint Air Reserve Base.

The installation operates a white radar aerostat, a tethered balloon that local residents often call "Fat Albert." That aerostat has been employed in counter-drug surveillance and other law-enforcement support missions for agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Administration. Pilots are cautioned about the aerostat on aeronautical charts; the restricted area includes the notice, "Caution: Unmarked balloon on cable to 14,000 [feet]." On April 20, 2007 a small aircraft, a Cessna 182, collided with the tether for the aerostat after its left wing struck the cable, resulting in a crash.

Name and possible origins

One explanation for the name links it to the native Joewood tree (Jacquinia keyensis), a plant sometimes called cudjoewood. An alternative origin proposed by writer John Viele of Summerland Key suggests the name derives from the West African personal name Cudjoe; Viele contends that a fugitive or free Black person bearing that name may have lived on the island prior to Gerdes' survey of 1849. The term West African appears in discussions of this theory.