Photos

A view of a small island in front of Key West.
This is also my 800th image on TE! So much!

Key West is a city and an island of the same name near the southernmost tip of the Florida Keys in Monroe County, Florida, United States.
Key West is known as the Southernmost City in the Continental United States. It is also the southern terminus of U.S. Route 1, State Road A1A and the East Coast Greenway.
In Pre-Columbian times Key West was inhabited by the Calusa people. The first European to visit was Juan Ponce de León in 1521. As Florida became a Spanish colony, a fishing and salvage village with a small garrison was established here.
Cayo Hueso (pronounced [ˈkajo ˈweso]) is the original Spanish name for the island of Key West. Spanish-speaking people today also use the term Cayo Hueso when referring to Key West. It literally means "bone key". It is said that the island was littered with the remains (bones) from an Indian battlefield or burial ground. The most widely accepted theory of how the name changed to Key West is that it is a false friend anglicization of the word, being that the word "hueso" (pronounced [ˈweso]) sounds like it could mean "west" in English. Other theories of how the island was named are that the name indicated that it was the westernmost Key, or that the island was the westernmost key with a reliable supply of water.
Many businesses on the island use the name, such as Casa Cayo Hueso, Cayo Hueso Resorts, Cayo Hueso Consultants, Cayo Hueso y Habana Historeum, etc.
In 1763, when Great Britain took control of Florida, the community of Spaniards and Native Americans were moved to Havana. Florida returned to Spanish control 20 years later, but there was no official resettlement of the island. Informally the island was used by fishermen from Cuba and from the British Bahamas, who were later joined by others from the United States after the latter nation's independence. While claimed by Spain, no nation exercised de facto control over the community there for some time.
In 1815 the Spanish governor in Havana, Cuba 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, Salas was so eager to sell the island that he sold it twice - first for a sloop valued at $575, and then to a U.S. businessman John W. Simonton, during a meeting in a Havana cafe, for the equivalent of $2,000 in pesos in 1821.
The sloop trader quickly sold the island to a General John Geddes, a former governor of South Carolina, who tried in vain to secure his rights to the property before Simonton, with the aid of some influential friends in Washington, was able to gain clear title to the island. Simonton had wide-ranging business interest in Mobile, Alabama.
He bought the island because a friend, John Whitehead, had drawn his attention on 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 90-mile (140 km) wide deep shipping lane Straits of Florida between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf Of Mexico. On March 25, 1822, Matthew C. Perry sailed the schooner Shark to Key West and planted the U.S. flag, physically claiming the Keys as United States property. Perry reported on piracy problems in the Caribbean. Perry renamed Cayo Hueso (Key West) to "Thompson's Island" for the Secretary of the Navy Smith Thompson and the harbor "Port Rodgers" for War of 1812 hero John Rodgers.
Neither name was to stick. In 1823 Commodore David Porter of the United States Navy West Indies Anti-Pirate Squadron took charge of Key West, which he ruled (but, according to some, exceeding his authority) as military dictator under martial law.

Model: NIKON D40
Software: Ver.1.10
Exposure Time: 10/4000 sec
F-Stop: f/10.0
ISO Speed Ratings: 200
Focal Length: 18 mm
Date Taken: 2008-04-27 18:07
Metering Mode: Pattern
File Size: 194 kb