Key West

Key West, city, seat of Monroe County, southern Florida, a port of entry on the island of Key West, at the southwestern end of the Florida Keys; incorporated 1828. The southernmost city of the conterminous United States, it is connected to the mainland by the Overseas Highway. The city's economy revolves around tourism, commercial fishing, and U.S. Navy and Coast Guard installations, and a noted artists' colony is here. Among the points of interest in Key West, which is the seat of a junior college, are the homes of the naturalist John J. Audubon and the writer Ernest Hemingway, a lighthouse (1846), and a tropical fish aquarium. Called Cayo Hueso (“island of bones”) by Spanish explorers, who found human bones here, it has been an important U.S. port since the early 1820s. Key West was in Union hands during the American Civil War. Population 24,382 (1980); 24,832 (1990); 25,478 (2000); 23,935 (2005 estimate).