Key West

Peoples related to the Calusa and Tequesta lived on the island at various times, and the island's Spanish name, Cayo Hueso, "bone cay", is said to come from human remains found there; the last Native residents were taken to Cuba when Spain handed Florida to Britain in 1763. For decades few people lived on the Keys, which were visited by Cuban and Bahamian fishermen and wreck salvagers. In 1815 the Spanish governor of Cuba granted the island to Juan Pablo Salas, who sold it in 1822 to the American businessman John Simonton. The same year the US Navy claimed the Keys, and in 1823 Commodore David Porter ran the island under martial law as a base against piracy.

Its deep harbour beside the Straits of Florida made Key West a maritime centre. Salvaging wrecks from the reef made it the wealthiest city per capita in the United States by the 1830s, and salt making, fishing and turtling followed. In the Civil War it stayed in Union hands, helped by Fort Zachary Taylor and the Martello towers. Cubans fleeing the war of 1868–78 brought cigar factories, and by 1890 Key West, with about 18,800 people, was the largest and richest city in Florida; but after the Great Fire of 1886 some factory owners moved to Ybor City in Tampa.

Henry Flagler's Overseas Railroad reached the island in 1912. After the Labor Day hurricane of 1935 destroyed much of it, the route was rebuilt as the Overseas Highway, completed in 1938. The navy, Hemingway in the 1930s and Truman's winter stays after 1946 raised the island's profile, and tourism took over. In 1982 a Border Patrol roadblock prompted the mock secession of the "Conch Republic". Hurricane Wilma flooded about 60 per cent of homes in 2005, and Irma struck the Keys in 2017.

Key West has long thought of itself as a place apart. Its residents are Conchs — originally the white Bahamian settlers who came after 1830, many descended from Loyalists who had fled the American Revolution — and the name now covers anyone born on the island, with long-term newcomers called "freshwater Conchs". Black Bahamians settled in Bahama Village, and Cuban exiles shaped the town from the 1860s: Key West had Cuban mayors, and José Martí founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party during his visits in the 1890s.

Writers have been drawn here for a century. Hemingway wrote some of his best-received works in his Whitehead Street house and set To Have and Have Not on the Depression-era island; Tennessee Williams lived in a modest New Town bungalow from 1949 until his death in 1983. The town's motto, One Human Family, reflects an open, tolerant reputation, and it has one of the country's best-known gay communities, with two pride festivals a year.

Public life is theatrical. Every evening crowds gather at Mallory Square for the sunset, with jugglers, musicians and food stalls; in July Hemingway Days brings a look-alike contest at Sloppy Joe's Bar; in April the Conch Republic celebrates its "independence"; and in the last week of October Fantasy Fest fills Duval Street with costumes and parades.

About 26,400 people lived in the city at the 2020 census, on an island only about 4 miles long and 1 mile wide, with an average height of about 8 feet above the sea. The city also takes in neighbouring keys and part of Stock Island, and it is the county seat of Monroe County.

Tourism dominates the economy, from guesthouses, bars and boat trips to the cruise ships that dock beside Mallory Square, and Naval Air Station Key West is the other large employer. Old Town, with its wooden houses and guesthouses, holds most of the visitor life; New Town, built on filled salt ponds in the late 1950s, has the shopping centres, schools, ball parks and many of the homes of working residents.

Daily life is shaped by water and weather. Many residents work in the visitor trade, and the rhythm of the year follows the winter season, when the population and prices swell. Hurricanes are a constant concern: Wilma's storm surge in 2005 left a "car graveyard" across the lower Keys, and Irma made landfall in the Keys as a Category 4 storm in 2017.

Key lime pie is the island's best-known dish and the official state pie of Florida: the tart juice of small Key limes set with sweetened condensed milk in a crumb crust, sold in slices all over Old Town. Conch fritters, fried balls of batter with chopped conch, a large sea snail, are the other classic, as across the Keys and the Bahamas.

The Cuban influence is strong. Cuban coffee — strong, sweet espresso — is sold from outdoor cafés along Duval Street, and Cuban restaurants such as El Siboney serve Cuban home cooking. Fresh local fish is widely served.

Drinking is part of the island's image. Sloppy Joe's Bar on Duval Street, at its present corner since 1937, trades on its link with Hemingway, and the bars along Duval Street fill late into the night. Sunset drinks by the water, at Mallory Square or along the harbour, are a daily ritual.