Precolonial and colonial times At various times before the 19th century, people who were related or subject to the
Calusa and the
Tequesta inhabited Key West. 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.
Cayo Hueso () is the original Spanish name for the island of Key West. It literally means "bone cay",
cay referring to a low island or reef. It is said that the island was littered with the remains (bones) of prior native inhabitants, who used the isle as a communal graveyard. This island was the westernmost Key with a reliable supply of water. Between 1763, when Great Britain took control of Florida from Spain, and 1821, when the United States took possession of Florida from Spain, there were few or no permanent inhabitants anywhere in the Florida Keys. Cubans and Bahamians regularly visited the Keys, the Cubans primarily to fish, while the Bahamians fished, caught turtles, cut hardwood timber, and salvaged wrecks. Smugglers and privateers also used the Keys for concealment. 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. During both the British and Spanish periods no nation exercised
de facto control. The Bahamians apparently set up camps in the Keys that were occupied for months at a time, and there were rumors of permanent settlements in the Keys by 1806 or 1807, but the locations are not known. Fishermen from New England started visiting the Keys after the end of the
War of 1812, and may have briefly settled on
Key Vaca in 1818.
Ownership claims In 1815, the
Spanish governor of Cuba in Havana
deeded the island of Key West to Juan Pablo Salas, an officer of the
Royal Spanish Navy Artillery posted in
Saint Augustine, Florida. After Florida was transferred to the United States in 1821, Salas was so eager to sell the island that he sold it twice – first for a sloop valued at $575 to a General
John Geddes, a former governor of
South Carolina, and then to a U.S. businessman John W. Simonton, during a meeting in a Havana café on January 19, 1822, for the equivalent of $2,000 in pesos in 1821. Geddes tried in vain to secure his rights to the property before Simonton who, with the aid of some influential friends in Washington, was able to gain clear title to the island. Simonton had wide-ranging business interests in
Mobile, Alabama. He bought the island because a friend, John Whitehead, had drawn his attention to the opportunities presented by the island's strategic location. John Whitehead had been stranded in Key West after a
shipwreck in 1819 and he had been impressed by the potential offered by the deep harbor of the island. The island was indeed considered the "
Gibraltar of the West" because of its strategic location on the –wide deep shipping lane, the
Straits of Florida, between the Atlantic Ocean and the
Gulf of Mexico. On March 25, 1822, Lt. Commander
Matthew C. Perry sailed the schooner to Key West and planted the U.S. flag, claiming the Keys as United States property. No protests were made over the American claim on Key West, so the Florida Keys became the
de facto property of the United States. After claiming the Florida Keys for the United States, Perry renamed
Cayo Hueso (Key West) to Thompson's Island for
Secretary of the Navy Smith Thompson, and the harbor Port Rodgers in honor of
War of 1812 hero and President of the Navy Supervisors Board
John Rodgers. In 1823,
Commodore David Porter of the
United States Navy West Indies Anti-
Pirate Squadron took charge of Key West, which he ruled as military dictator under
martial law. The United States Navy gave Porter the mission of countering piracy and the slave trade in the Key West area.
First developers Soon after his purchase, John Simonton subdivided the island into plots and sold three undivided quarters of each plot to: • John Mountain and U.S. Consul John Warner, who quickly resold their quarter to Pardon C. Greene, who took up residence on the island. Greene is the only one of the four "founding fathers" to establish himself permanently on the island, where he became quite prominent as head of P.C. Greene and Company. He was a member of the city council and also served briefly as mayor. He died in 1838 at the age of 57. • John Whitehead, his friend who had advised him to buy Key West. John Whitehead lived in Key West for only eight years. He became a partner in the firm of P.C. Greene and Company from 1824 to 1827. A lifelong bachelor, he left the island for good in 1832. He came back only once, during the
Civil War in 1861, and died the next year. • John Fleeming (nowadays spelled Fleming). 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. That first plat and the names used remained mostly intact and are still in use today. Duval Street, the island's main street, is named after Florida's first territorial governor,
William Pope Duval, who served between 1822 and 1834 as the longest-serving governor in Florida's U.S. history. William Whitehead became chief editorial writer for the
Enquirer, a local newspaper, in 1834. He preserved copies of his newspaper as well as copies from the
Key West Gazette, its predecessor. He 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 (1820–1840). In the 1830s, Key West was the richest city per capita in the United States. In 1846, the city suffered severely from the
1846 Havana hurricane. In 1852, the first Catholic Church, St. Mary's Star-Of-The-Sea, was built. The year 1864 became a landmark for the church in South Florida when five
Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary arrived from Montreal, Canada, and established the first Catholic school in South Florida. At the time it was called Convent of Mary Immaculate. The school is still operating today and is now known as the Basilica School of Saint Mary Star of the Sea.
American Civil War and late 19th century During the
American Civil War, while Florida seceded and joined the
Confederate States of America, Key West remained in U.S. Union hands because of the naval base. Most locals were sympathetic to the Confederacy, however, and many flew Confederate flags over their homes. However, Key West was also home to a large free black population. This population grew during the war as more enslaved black people fled from their enslavers and came under the relative safety of the Union garrison there.
Fort Zachary Taylor, constructed from 1845 to 1866, was an important Key West outpost during the Civil War. Construction began in 1861 on two other forts, East and West Martello Towers, which served as side armories and batteries for the larger fort. When completed, they were connected to Fort Taylor by railroad tracks for movement of munitions.
Fort Jefferson, located about from Key West on Garden Key in the
Dry Tortugas, served after the Civil War as the prison for
Samuel A. Mudd, convicted of
conspiracy for setting the broken leg of
John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President
Abraham Lincoln. In the 19th century, major industries included
wrecking,
fishing,
turtling, and salt manufacturing. From 1830 to 1861, Key West was a major center of U.S. salt production, harvesting the commodity from the sea (via receding tidal pools) rather than from salt mines. Some factory owners chose not to rebuild and instead moved their operations to the new community of
Ybor City in
Tampa, leading to a slow decline in the cigar industry in Key West. Still, Key West remained the
largest and wealthiest city in Florida at the end of the 1880s. Beginning in 1946, President
Harry S. Truman established a working vacation residence in Key West, known as the
Harry S. Truman Little White House, where he spent a total of 175 days during his presidency. In 1948, Key West was affected by two hurricanes in quick succession—the
September 1948 Florida hurricane and the
1948 Miami hurricane. Prior to the
Cuban Revolution of 1959, transportation between Key West and Havana included regular ferry and air services. During the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy frequently referenced Key West's proximity to Cuba in public speeches, and he visited the island shortly after the
Cuban Missile Crisis. In 1982, the city briefly declared symbolic independence as the "
Conch Republic" in response to a
United States Border Patrol blockade at the junction of U.S. Route 1 and the mainland in
Florida City. The resulting traffic delays significantly disrupted tourism. The protest, while symbolic, remains a part of local culture, and the Conch Republic Independence Celebration is held annually on April 23. In 1998,
Hurricane Georges damaged the city. In 2017,
Hurricane Irma caused
substantial damage with wind and flooding, killing three people. ==Geography==