Ballast Key is an island in the
Florida Keys
The Florida Keys are a coral island, coral cay archipelago off the southern coast of Florida, forming the southernmost part of the continental United States. They begin at the southeastern coast of the Florida peninsula, about south of Miami a ...
in
Monroe County,
Florida
Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...
,
United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
. It is the southernmost point of land in the
contiguous United States
The contiguous United States, also known as the U.S. mainland, officially referred to as the conterminous United States, consists of the 48 adjoining U.S. states and the District of Columbia of the United States in central North America. The te ...
. It was the last privately owned land within the boundaries of the
Key West National Wildlife Refuge.
Located in the Outlying Islands of the Florida Keys, it is one of the
Mule Keys
The Mule Keys are a group of scattered islets in the Florida Keys in Monroe County, Florida, United States. They are between west of Key West, separated from it by the Northwest Channel. On the west, they are separated from the Marquesas Keys by ...
that are west of
Key West
Key West is an island in the Straits of Florida, at the southern end of the U.S. state of Florida. Together with all or parts of the separate islands of Dredgers Key, Fleming Key, Sunset Key, and the northern part of Stock Island, it con ...
. The island's were donated by Key West developer
David W. Wolkowsky to
The Nature Conservancy
The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is a global environmental organization headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, United States. it works via affiliates or branches in 79 countries and territories, as well as across every state in the US.
Founded in ...
, who deeded ownership of the land to the
United States Fish and Wildlife Service
The United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS or FWS) is a List of federal agencies in the United States, U.S. federal government agency within the United States Department of the Interior which oversees the management of fish, wildlife, ...
while arranging to manage the resource.
Ballast Key had a cameo appearance in the Bond movie ''
Licence to Kill
''Licence to Kill'' is a 1989 spy film, the sixteenth in the List of James Bond films, ''James Bond'' series produced by Eon Productions, and the second and final film to star Timothy Dalton as the MI6 agent James Bond (literary character), J ...
'' and it and Mr. Wolkowsky made the pages of the novel as well. "David, it's James, James Bond...I've broken into your island. I hope you don't mind", reads a passage in the book. It is also used in the final scene of the 2015 science fiction thriller ''
Self/less
''Self/less'' is a 2015 American science fiction action thriller film directed by Tarsem Singh, produced by Ram Bergman and James D. Stern and written by Alex and David Pastor. The film tells the story of a business tycoon and billionaire diag ...
''. Over the years, Wolkowsky has hosted numerous artists, writers and celebrities on Ballast Key, including
Jimmy Buffett
James William Buffett (December 25, 1946 – September 1, 2023) was an American singer-songwriter, author, and businessman. He was known for his tropical rock sound and persona, which often portrayed a lifestyle described as "island escapis ...
,
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the three ...
,
Truman Capote
Truman Garcia Capote ( ; born Truman Streckfus Persons; September 30, 1924 – August 25, 1984) was an American novelist, screenwriter, playwright, and actor. Several of his short stories, novels, and plays have been praised as literary classics ...
,
Nancy Friday
Nancy Colbert Friday (August 27, 1933 – November 5, 2017) was an American author who wrote on the topics of female sexuality and liberation. Her writings argue that women have often been reared under an ideal of womanhood, which was outdated ...
,
Judy Blume
Judith Blume (née Sussman; born February 12, 1938) is an American writer of children's, young adult, and adult fiction. Blume began writing in 1959 and has published more than 26 novels. Among her best-known works are '' Are You There God? It's ...
,
John Hersey
John Richard Hersey (June 17, 1914 – March 24, 1993) was an American writer and journalist. He is considered one of the earliest practitioners of the so-called New Journalism, in which storytelling techniques of fiction are adapted to no ...
,
John Malcolm Brinnin
John Malcolm Brinnin (September 13, 1916 – June 26, 1998) was a Canadian-born American poet and literary critic.
Life and work
Brinnin was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, to American parents John A. Brinnin and Frances Malcolm Brinni ...
,
Richard Wilbur
Richard Purdy Wilbur (March 1, 1921 – October 14, 2017) was an American poet and literary translator. One of the foremost poets, along with his friend Anthony Hecht, of the World War II generation, Wilbur's work, often employing rhyme, and c ...
,
Robert Stone, British prime minister
Edward Heath
Sir Edward Richard George Heath (9 July 1916 – 17 July 2005) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1970 to 1974 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 1965 ...
,
Prince Michael of Greece
Prince Michael of Greece and Denmark ( 7 January 1939 – 28 July 2024) was a Greek historian, author, and member of the Greek royal family. He wrote several historical books and biographies of Greek and other European figures, Montgomery-Massi ...
,
Tony Richardson
Cecil Antonio Richardson (5 June 1928 – 14 November 1991) was an English theatre and film director, producer and screenwriter, whose career spanned five decades. He was identified with the "angry young men" group of British directors and play ...
,
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders (born February 16, 1952) is an American documentary filmmaker and portrait photographer based in New York City. The majority of his work is shot in large format.
Early life
Greenfield-Sanders was born in 1952, in Mi ...
,
The Bee Gees
''The'' is a grammatical Article (grammar), article in English language, English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the ...
,
Gloria Estefan
Gloria María Milagrosa Estefan (; ; born September 1, 1957) is an American singer, actress, and businesswoman. Estefan is an eight-time Grammy Awards, Grammy Award winner, a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, and has been named one of t ...
, Natica Waterbury,
Lucius Beebe
Lucius Morris Beebe (December 9, 1902 – February 4, 1966) was an American writer, gourmand, photographer, railroad historian, journalist, and syndicated columnist.
Early life and education
Beebe was born in Wakefield, Massachusetts, to a prom ...
,
Lady Caroline Blackwood
Lady Caroline Blackwood (born Caroline Maureen Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood; 16 July 1931 – 14 February 1996) was an English writer, socialite, and muse. Her novels have been praised for their wit and intelligence. One of her works is an autobi ...
, and an occasional
Vanderbilt,
Rockefeller,
Mellon, and
Duke
Duke is a male title either of a monarch ruling over a duchy, or of a member of Royal family, royalty, or nobility. As rulers, dukes are ranked below emperors, kings, grand princes, grand dukes, and above sovereign princes. As royalty or nobi ...
.
Tennessee Williams often painted canvases while visiting David Wolkowsky on Ballast Key in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Ballast Key features a main house with four bedrooms and a master suite, and a fully equipped three-bedroom guesthouse overlooking a palm tree-lined sand beach. Water is supplied to the homes by
desalination
Desalination is a process that removes mineral components from saline water. More generally, desalination is the removal of salts and minerals from a substance. One example is Soil salinity control, soil desalination. This is important for agric ...
.
References
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