Editing Key West (section)

==History==
{{main|History of Key West}}

===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.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Florida Keys: A History of the Pioneers|last=Viele|first=John|publisher=Pineapple Press|year=1996|isbn=978-1-56164-101-7|location=Sarasota, Florida|pages=3, 7}}</ref>

''[[:es:Cayo Hueso|Cayo Hueso]]'' ({{IPA|es|ˈkaʝo ˈweso}}) 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.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://fcit.usf.edu/Florida/docs/k/keys03.htm|title=Exploring Florida Documents: Key West: General History and Sketches|access-date=July 16, 2018}}</ref> This island was the westernmost Key with a reliable supply of water.<ref>Windhorn, Stan & Langley, Wright 1973. ''Yesterday's Key West''</ref>

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.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Florida Keys: A History of the Pioneers|last=Viele|first=John|publisher=Pineapple Press|year=1996|isbn=978-1-56164-101-7|location=Sarasota, Florida|pages=13–16}}</ref>

===Ownership claims===
In 1815, the [[List of colonial heads of Cuba|Spanish governor of Cuba]] in Havana [[deed]]ed the island of Key West to Juan Pablo Salas, an officer of the [[Spanish Navy|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&nbsp;– first for a sloop valued at $575 to a General [[John Geddes (politician)|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 {{convert|90|mi|km|-1|adj=on}}–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 {{USS|Shark|1821|6}} to Key West and planted the U.S. flag, claiming the Keys as United States property.<ref>{{cite web|author=Jerry Wilkinson |url=http://www.keyshistory.org/keywest.html |title=History of Key West |publisher=Florida Keys History Museum |access-date=August 29, 2012}}</ref> 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 [[United States Secretary of the Navy|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 (naval officer, War of 1812)|John Rodgers]]. In 1823, [[Commodore (United States)|Commodore]] [[David Porter (naval officer)|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<ref>{{cite web|url=http://fcit.usf.edu/florida/docs/k/keys10.htm |title=Exploring Florida Documents: Key West: The Municipality |publisher=Florida Center for Instructional Technology |access-date=August 29, 2012}}</ref> 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.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|title = Key West: The Old and the New|last = Browne|first = Jefferson B.|publisher = The Record Company Printers and Publishers|year = 1912|location = St. Augustine, FL|pages = 7|chapter = Chapter 1: General History and Random Sketches|chapter-url = https://archive.org/details/keywestoldnew00brow}}</ref> 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 (United States)|Civil War]] in 1861, and died the next year.
* John Fleeming (nowadays spelled Fleming).<ref name=":1" /> John W.C. Fleeming was English-born and was active in mercantile business in Mobile, Alabama, where he befriended John Simonton. Fleeming spent only a few months in Key West in 1822 and left for Massachusetts, where he married. He returned to Key West in 1832 with the intention of developing salt manufacturing on the island but died the same year at the age of 51.

Simonton spent the winter in Key West and the summer in Washington, where he lobbied hard for the development of the island and to establish a naval base on the island, both to take advantage of the island's strategic location and to bring law and order to the town. He died in 1854.

The names of the four "founding fathers"<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.fabulous-florida-keys.com/history-of-key-west-florida.html|title=Loading|access-date=June 7, 2011|archive-url=https://archive.today/20101024204020/http://www.fabulous-florida-keys.com/history-of-key-west-florida.html|archive-date=October 24, 2010|url-status=usurped|df=mdy-all}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6LjWg4xHKVUC&q=richest+city+per+capita&pg=PA157 |title=Florida: A Guide to the Southernmost State |date=1939 |access-date=December 2, 2018 |place=New York |author=Federal Writers' Project |publisher=Oxford University Press |page=199 |isbn=9781603540094}}</ref>

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 Mary Immaculate Star of the Sea School.

[[File:key west 1856.jpg|thumb|center|upright=4|A panoramic view of Key West, {{Circa|1856}}]]

===American Civil War and late 19th century===
[[File:Florida - Key West - NARA - 23936655 (cropped).jpg|thumb|right|East Martello Tower]]
[[File:Fortzacharytaylor.jpg|thumb|[[Fort Zachary Taylor Historic State Park|Fort Zachary Taylor]] in Key West, active during the [[American Civil War|Civil War]], contains the largest collection of Civil War [[cannon]]s ever discovered at a single location.]]

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.<ref name="ReferenceA">A Chronological History of Key West A Tropical Island City, Stephen Nichols, 3rd ed.</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Solomon |first1=Irvin D. |last2=Erhart |first2=Grace |date=1999 |title=Race and Civil War in South Florida |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30147583 |journal=The Florida Historical Quarterly |volume=77 |issue=3 |pages=320–341 |jstor=30147583 |issn=0015-4113}}</ref> [[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.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> Early in 1864, 900 men from the 2nd United States Colored Troops (USCT) arrived in Key West as replacements for the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers. Many of these men would see action in southern Florida and the 2nd USCT would become "one of the most active" black regiments in Florida.<ref>Solomon & Erhart (1999), 336</ref> [[Dry Tortugas National Park|Fort Jefferson]], located about {{convert|68|mi|km}} from Key West on Garden Key in the [[Dry Tortugas]], served after the Civil War as the prison for [[Samuel Mudd|Samuel A. Mudd]], convicted of [[conspiracy (crime)|conspiracy]] for setting the broken leg of [[John Wilkes Booth]], the assassin of President [[Abraham Lincoln]].

In the 19th century, major industries included [[Wrecking (shipwreck)|wrecking]], [[commercial fishing|fishing]], [[Turtling (hunting)|turtling]], and salt manufacturing.<ref name="Keith Salt">June Keith, ''June Keith's Key West & The Florida Keys: A Guide to the Coral Islands'' (5th ed.: Palm Island Press, 2014), p. 8.</ref> 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.<ref name="Keith Salt"/> After the outbreak of the Civil War, Union troops shut down the salt industry after Confederate sympathizers smuggled the product into the South.<ref name="Keith Salt"/> Salt production resumed at the end of the war, but the industry was destroyed by an [[1876 Atlantic hurricane season|1876 hurricane]] and never recovered, in part because of new salt mines on the mainland.<ref name="Keith Salt"/>

During the [[Ten Years' War]] (an unsuccessful Cuban war for independence in the 1860s and 1870s), many [[Cubans]] sought refuge in Key West. Several cigar factories relocated to the city from Cuba, and Key West quickly became a major producer of cigars. The [[Great Fire of Key West]], on April 1, 1886, started at a coffee shop next to the [[San Carlos Institute]] and spread out of control, destroyed 18 cigar factories and 614 houses and government warehouses.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Marker Details – Key West Historic Markers Project |url=http://www.keywesthistoricmarkertour.org/marker/442 |access-date=2018-11-25}}</ref> Some factory owners chose not to rebuild and instead moved their operations to the new community of [[Ybor City]] in [[Tampa, Florida|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.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>

{{USS|Maine|ACR-1|6}} sailed from Key West on her fateful visit to Havana, where she blew up and sank in [[Havana Harbor]], igniting the [[Spanish–American War]]. Crewmen from the ship are buried in Key West, and the Navy investigation into the blast occurred at the Key West Customs House.

===20th century===
[[File:Florida - Key West - NARA - 23936665 (cropped).jpg|thumb|The railway yard and station on Trumbo Point in Key West, {{Circa|1930}}]]
In October 1909, Key West was devastated by the [[1909 Florida Keys hurricane]]. Further damage was suffered the following year in the [[1910 Cuba hurricane]].

Key West was relatively isolated until 1912, when it was connected to the Florida mainland via the [[Overseas Railway]] extension of [[Henry Flagler|Henry M. Flagler's]] [[Florida East Coast Railway]] (FEC). Flagler created a landfill at [[Trumbo Point]] for his railyards.

The [[1919 Florida Keys hurricane]] caused catastrophic damage to the area.

On December 25, 1921, [[Lynching of Manuel Cabeza|Manuel Cabeza was lynched]] by members of the [[Ku Klux Klan]] for living with a black woman.{{sfn|Newton|2016|p=64}}

[[Pan American Airlines]] was founded in Key West, originally to fly visitors to Havana, in 1926. The airline contracted with the United States Postal Service in 1927 to deliver mail to and from Cuba and the United States. The mail route was known as the ''Key West, Florida – Havana Mail Route''.

The [[Labor Day Hurricane of 1935]] destroyed much of the Overseas Railway and killed hundreds of residents, including around 400 [[World War I]] veterans who were living in camps and working on federal road and mosquito-control projects in the Middle Keys. The FEC could not afford to restore the railroad.

The [[Federal government of the United States|U.S. government]] then rebuilt the rail route as an automobile highway, completed in 1938, built atop many of the footings of the railroad. It became an extension of [[U.S. Route 1 in Florida|U.S. Route 1]]. The portion of U.S. 1 through the Keys is called the [[Overseas Highway]].  [[Franklin Roosevelt]] toured the road in 1939.

During [[World War II]], more than 14,000 ships came through the island's harbor. The population, because of an influx of soldiers, sailors, laborers, and tourists, sometimes doubled or even tripled at times during the war.<ref>Gibson, A. H. (2012). American Gibraltar: Key West during World War II. The Florida Historical Quarterly, 90(4), 393–425. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23264714, pp. 396</ref>

Starting in 1946, US President [[Harry S. Truman]] established a working vacation home in Key West, the [[Harry S. Truman Little White House]], where he would spend 175 days of his presidency.

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

Prior to the [[Cuban revolution]] of 1959, there were regular ferry and airplane services between Key West and Havana.

[[John F. Kennedy]] was to use "90 miles from Cuba" extensively in his speeches against [[Fidel Castro]]. Kennedy himself visited Key West a month after the resolution of the [[Cuban Missile Crisis]].

[[File:Hurricane Georges center over Key West September 25, 1998.png|thumb|The center of Hurricane Georges passes over Key West on September&nbsp;25,&nbsp;1998.]]
In 1982, the city of Key West briefly asserted independence as the [[Conch Republic]] as a protest over a [[United States Border Patrol]] [[blockade]]. This blockade was set up on [[U.S. Route 1 in Florida|US 1]], where the northern end of the Overseas Highway meets the mainland at [[Florida City]]. A traffic jam of {{convert|17|mi|km}} ensued while the [[United States Border Patrol|Border Patrol]] stopped every car leaving the Keys, supposedly searching for illegal immigrants attempting to enter the mainland United States. This paralyzed the Florida Keys, which rely heavily on the tourism industry. Flags, T-shirts and other merchandise representing the Conch Republic are still popular souvenirs for visitors to Key West, and the Conch Republic Independence Celebration—including parades and parties—is celebrated annually, on April 23.

In 1998, [[Hurricane Georges]] damaged the city.

In 2017, [[Hurricane Irma]] caused [[Effects of Hurricane Irma in Florida#Florida Keys|substantial damage]] with wind and flooding, killing three people.