Key West
county seat of Monroe County, Florida, United States
Key West (Spanish: Cayo Hueso [kaʝo ˈweso]) is a coral cay island in the Straits of Florida, at the southernmost end of the U.S. state of Florida and its outlying Florida Keys archipelago. Together with all or parts of the separate islands of Dredgers Key, Fleming Key, Sunset Key, and the northern part of Stock Island, it constitutes the City of Key West.
For thousands of years, Key West and the surrounding islands were inhabited by various Native American tribes. The island's first recorded European contact occurred in 1513, when an expedition led by Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León circumnavigated the Florida Keys amid his voyage along the coast of Florida, though no permanent settlement was established. Over the following centuries, the island remained sparsely populated while passing between periods of Spanish and British control. Following the transfer of Florida to the United States in 1819, Key West rapidly developed into a major maritime center, with its strategic location along the Florida Straits and thriving wrecking industry helping make it one of the wealthiest communities in the United States during the 19th century.
Key West is the southernmost city in the contiguous United States and the westernmost island in the Florida Keys connected by highway, located about 130 miles (210 km) southwest of Miami and roughly 95 miles (153 km) north of Cuba. The island measures approximately 4 miles (6 km) long and 1 mile (2 km) wide, with a total land area of about 4.2 square miles (11 km²), and the city itself spans roughly 5.6 square miles (14.5 km²). It serves as the county seat of Monroe County, which includes a majority of the Florida Keys and part of the Everglades, and had a population of 26,444 at the 2020 census, carrying the motto “One Human Family.”
Key West functions as a major transportation and tourism hub, serving as the southern terminus of U.S. Route 1 and hosting a passenger cruise port, an international airport, and Naval Air Station Key West. Its main commercial corridor is Duval Street, which runs from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean.
The public source identifies “Key West” as county seat of Monroe County, Florida, United States. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around West, county and seat.
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A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Key West”, the useful work is to connect “county seat of Monroe County, Florida, United States” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q485186. VIAF identifies the subject as 156598145. The Library of Congress control number is n80020818. Authority coordinates are 24.560, -81.784. 5 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1513, 1819 and 2020.
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This entry incorporates text from “Key West” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.