During the Cold War the future park area was a training ground for Cuban exiles training for missions in Fidel Castro's Cuba. Elliott Key in particular was used by the Central Intelligence Agency as a training area in the early 1960s in preparation for Bay of Pigs invasion. The largest facility was Ledbury Lodge, the only hotel ever built on the key. As late as 1988 a group of Cuban exiles were arrested when they tried to use the key for a mock landing. Farther north, exiled Venezuelan president Marcos Pérez Jiménez kept a house on Soldier Key until he was extradited in 1963.