Swampy's Florida

A sight to see! Tourists would go to watch the penned sea turtles, called “turtle crawls” or “kraals”,  as they swim and bob about. This postcard doesn’t have a date, but I would say the 1940s.

The sea turtles were brought in from the Caribbean and  South America to the only sea turtle cannery in the U.S. in Key West to be made into soups. The Thompson Fish House thrived until the sea turtle population had been reduced to a point that the Thompson Fish House, along with other canneries in the Western Hemisphere, couldn’t keep up with the demand. Eventually the Endangered Species Act was signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1973, which made gave federal protection to many animals, including the sea turtle. The Act permanently ended any commercial sea turtle farming.

In 1994 the Thompson Fish House was was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.