49 Facts About Key West

Key West is an island in the Straits of Florida, within the U S state of Florida.

Key West is about 95 miles north of Cuba at their closest points.

City of Key West is the county seat of Monroe County, which includes a majority of the Florida Keys and part of the Everglades.

Key West is the southernmost city in the contiguous United States and the westernmost island connected by highway in the Florida Keys.

Key West is the southern terminus of U S Route 1, State Road A1A, the East Coast Greenway and, before 1935, the Florida East Coast Railway.

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Key West is a port of call for many passenger cruise ships.

Naval Air Station Key West is an important year-round training site for naval aviation due to the tropical weather, which is the reason Key West was chosen as the site of President Harry S Truman's Winter White House.

The last Native American residents of Key West were Calusa refugees who were taken to Cuba when Florida was transferred from Spain to Great Britain in 1763.

In 1766 the British governor of East Florida recommended that a post be set up on Key West to improve control of the area, but nothing came of it.

Key West bought the island because a friend, John Whitehead, had drawn his attention to the opportunities presented by the island's strategic location.

Names of the four "founding fathers" of modern Key West were given to main arteries of the island when it was first platted in 1829 by William Adee Whitehead, John Whitehead's younger brother.

Key West preserved copies of his newspaper as well as copies from the Key West Gazette, its predecessor.

Key West later sent those copies to the Monroe County clerk for preservation, which gives us a view of life in Key West in the early days.

From 1830 to 1861, Key West was a major center of U S salt production, harvesting the commodity from the sea rather than from salt mines.

Still, Key West remained the largest and wealthiest city in Florida at the end of the 1880s.

Key West was relatively isolated until 1912, when it was connected to the Florida mainland via the Overseas Railway extension of Henry M Flagler's Florida East Coast Railway.

In 1948, Key West suffered damage from two hurricanes within as many months, from the September 1948 Florida hurricane then the 1948 Miami hurricane.

In 1982, the city of Key West briefly asserted independence as the Conch Republic as a protest over a United States Border Patrol blockade.

Key West is an island located at in the Straits of Florida.

City of Key West is the southernmost city in the contiguous United States, and the island is the westernmost island connected by highway in the Florida Keys.

Sigsbee Park—originally known as Dredgers Key—and Fleming Key, both located to the north, and Sunset Key located to the west are all included in the city boundaries.

Key West is closer to Havana than it is to Miami (130 miles or 210 kilometers by air or 165 miles or 266 kilometers by road).

Key West is the usual endpoint for marathon swims from Cuba, including Diana Nyad's 2013 record-setting swim as the first completed without a shark cage or fins and Susie Maroney's 1997 swim from within a shark cage.

Fortifications such as Fort Zachary Taylor, the East Martello Tower, and the West Martello Tower, helped ensure that Key West would remain in Union control throughout the Civil War.

Additionally, the residences of some historical Key West families are recognized on the National Register of Historic Places as important landmarks of history and culture, including the Porter House on Caroline Street and the Gato House on Virginia Street.

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Key West residents moved the library to various locations across the island.

Key West Library has an ever-expanding collection of 70, 000 items.

Key West used Depression-era Key West as one of the locations in To Have and Have Not—his only novel with scenes that occur in the United States.

Key West bought a permanent house in 1949 and listed Key West as his primary residence until his death in 1983.

Port of Key West includes Key West Bight, Garrison Bight at City Marina, as well as three docks utilized by cruise ships.

In 2020, Key West voters approved three amendments to the City Charter which prohibit large cruise ships, limit daily disembarkations, and prioritize cruise ships with superior public health and environmental records.

Key West is the driest city in Florida, averaging just over 40 inches of rain per year.

The most recent hurricane to impact Key West was Hurricane Irma, which made landfall in the Keys in the morning of September 10, 2017 as a Category 4 storm.

MTV's The Real World: Key West was filming during the hurricane and deals with the storm.

Many of the residents of Key West were immigrants from the Bahamas, known as Conchs, who arrived in increasing numbers after 1830.

In 1890, Key West had a population of nearly 18, 800 and was the biggest and richest city in Florida.

Half the residents were said to be of Cuban origin, and Key West regularly had Cuban mayors, including the son of Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, father of the Cuban Republic, who was elected mayor in 1876.

Key West was flooded with refugees during the Mariel Boatlift.

NAS Key West is still a training facility for US Naval Aviation personnel.

Key West has had a military presence since 1823, shortly after its purchase by Simonton in 1822.

On March 25, 1822, naval officer Matthew C Perry sailed the schooner Shark to Key West and planted the U S flag claiming the Keys as United States property.

NAVSTA Key West was closed in 1974 as part of post-Vietnam War force reductions across the Department of Defense.

Key West was always an important military post, since it sits at the northern edge of the deepwater channel connecting the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico via the Florida Straits.

Key West is part of the Miami-Fort Lauderdale television market.

Key West area has 11 FM radio stations, 4 FM translators, and 2 AM stations.

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Florida Keys Keynoter and the Key West Citizen are published locally and serve Key West and Monroe County.

Key West the Newspaper is a local weekly investigative newspaper, established in 1994 by Dennis Cooper, taken over in 2013 as a fully digital publication by Arnaud and Naja Girard.

District-operated elementary schools serving the City of Key West include Poinciana Elementary School, which is located on the island of Key West, and Gerald Adams Elementary School, which is located on Stock Island.

Key West Montessori Charter School is a district-sanctioned charter school on Key West Island.