Cedar Key Coffee Shops & Bakeries: 5 Local Spots

The Wood the World Wrote With

Permanent occupation of the Cedar Keys began in 1839, when the US Army under Zachary Taylor built Fort No. 4 on Depot Key as a depot and hospital and made it the headquarters of the Army of the South. The Army abandoned its Depot Key base in 1842, and the Florida Armed Occupation Act passed by Congress that year opened the Cedar Keys to settlement. That same year, on 4 October 1842, a hurricane drove a 27-foot storm surge across the keys, destroying Cantonment Morgan and wrecking much of Depot Key.

Augustus Steele claimed Depot Key under the Armed Occupation Act in 1843, renamed it Atsena Otie Key, and built summer cottages there for Florida and Georgia planters. He had bought the military structures on Atsena Otie Key that year for $227 along with title to its 167 acres, and the island became the nucleus of the first organised settlement in the Cedar Keys. Atsena Otie means cedar island in the Creek language — the cedar that gave the whole group of keys its name. The Cedar Key post office was established in 1845 with Steele as its first postmaster.

Cedar milling was the making of the town. The Eberhard Faber mill, set up in 1865, cut red cedar slats for pencils, and by 1886 the 17 sawmills at Cedar Key were turning out nearly half a million board feet a week. Cedar Key supplied the wood the world wrote with: both the Eberhard Faber mill and the Eagle Pencil Company cut pencil slats here until the 1896 hurricane and fire damaged both so badly that they closed soon after. The Eagle Pencil Company site on Way Key at 3rd and G Streets is where cedar slats and pencil boxes were made.

Where to Start the Morning

What follows is a short list, ordered by nothing more than geography and the accident of how the streets run. Every one of them is a cafe or a bakery, and none of them is a museum piece.

1842 Daily Grind & Mercantile sits at 598 2nd St, rated 4.8 from 460 reviews.

The Prickly Palm is at 495 2nd St, rated 4.9 from 268 reviews.

Cedar Key Island Bakery is at 315 2nd St, rated 4.9 from 101 reviews — the smallest review count of the three on that street, which in a town of 756 people is less a verdict than a sample size.

Annie's Cafe is at FL-24 &, 609 6th St, rated 4.6 from 847 reviews. It carries the largest review base on this list by a wide margin.

CK Life is Sweet LLC is listed in Cedar Key, rated 5.0 from 2 reviews. Two reviews is not a reputation. It is a rumor with a star rating attached, and you should treat it as such.

The Island That Held

Atsena Otie Key, the island first settled, is where more than thirty-five houses on the high ground survived the 1896 storm surge that locals still call the tidal wave. The mills did not. The pencil slats stopped, the sawmills came down to nothing, and the town that had shipped the wood the world wrote with was left to find another reason to exist.

It found several, none of them industrial.

October, and the One Day Out

The Cedar Key Seafood Festival is run by the Lions Club each October: more than 100 arts and crafts exhibits, live music, a Saturday parade at 11am, and clam chowder, oysters and smoked mullet dip. It is also the rare chance to reach Seahorse Key, a historic island three miles out that is otherwise closed to the public.

What the Numbers Say About Who Lives Here

Median household income is $69,226. Median home value is $331,100. Median gross rent is $918. The unemployment rate is 4.2 percent, and 49.7 percent of residents hold a bachelor's degree or higher.

The sawmills are gone. The wood went out into the world and stayed there, in pencils and boxes and the slats of a trade that ended in a single storm. What is left on the keys is smaller, older, and considerably quieter than the thing that made it — and it still opens in the morning.