History in towns: Key West Florida.

Approaching Key West aboard the United States revenue cutter Marion in May 1832, some ten years after Spain had ceded the territory of Florida to the United States, John James Audubon wrote:

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With what delightful feelings did we gaze on the objects around us!--the 
gorgeous flowers, the singular and beautiful plants, the luxuriant 
trees. The balmy air which we breathed filled us with animation, so pure 
and salubrious did it seem to be. The birds which we saw were almost all 
new to us; their lovely forms appeared to be arrayed in more brilliant 
apparel than I had ever seen before, and as they fluttered in happy 
playfulness among the bushes, or glided over the light green waters, we 
longed to form a more intimate acquaintance with them. (1) 

On his first visit to Key West in 1928, almost a century after Audubon's excursion, Ernest Hemingway told a friend, "It's the best place I've ever been any time anywhere, flowers tamarind trees, guava trees, coconut palms.... Got tight last night and did knife tricks." (2)

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Key West is the southernmost and the most vibrant of the Keys, the string of small coral islands pendant from the tip of the Florida peninsula that curl south-westward, with the Atlantic Ocean on the east and the Gulf of Mexico on the west. For many years the eccentric old town has been a haven for artists and, most notably, writers, who have customarily described it as a tropical Eden.

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