On the upstairs floor of the Keys History and Discovery Center in Islamorada is a room available by appointment only to scholars and researchers. The items that occupy the Jerry Wilkinson Research Library vary widely, from cannonballs and ballast stones found in centuries-old shipwrecks to blueprints of the original Overseas Highway.
The nonprofit museumâs curator, Brad Bertelli, a local author and historian, has amassed this collection of items over years of donations and searching through the basements of local collectors and other history buffs. Other items in the museumâs library are archives of the Keynoter and Reporter newspapers, which ceased printing several years ago, dating back to the 1960s; issues of the now-defunct Florida Keys magazine from the 1990s, donated by a former resident now living in Pennsylvania, a manatee rib that dates back a few million years and an enrollment card to Cornell University from spring of 1896 for William Krome, an influential engin