Key West, Florida: The Sweetest Do Nothing Contrived

Parks & Recreation, Sept, 2000 by Alexis McKenney, Daniel Dustin, Robert Wolff

"I never thought of like as being breezy. I never thought of time as time to play. I never thought that I could take it easy. But all those feelings changed for me today."

--Jimmy Buffet

It is 6:00 a.m. and we are awakened by the sounds of roosters crowing. The brightness of the morning sun filters through the cracks of the wooden shutters. Anxious to greet the day, we wipe the sleep out of our eyes and stumble across the street to Pepe's for fresh apple bread and coffee. After breakfast, we amble over to the docks to watch seagulls circle for prey, pelicans dive bomb for fish, and shrimpers head out to sea. Then we explore the neighborhoods off Duval Street, admiring the New Orleans-style houses adorned with big porches, shuttered windows, and verandas. We pass by several buildings with commemorative signs proclaiming "On this site in 1897 nothing happened." Before long it is time for conch chowder and a beer. Without saying it, we are all thinking the same thing. This is the life.

In the 1500s, Spaniards named what we know today as Key West, "Cayo Hueso," the Island of Bones. Historians speculate that if there was any truth to the matter, the bones probably were the remains of Calusa Indians, Florida's first people. In the 1700s, the British changed the word "Hueso" to "West." Then, in 1822, disenchanted with the heat, mosquitoes, and limited supply of fresh water, Key West's Spanish owners sold the island to an American, John Simonton, for $2,000. Soon thereafter, the Stars and Stripes were raised over Key West, and the Navy quickly established a base nearby to protect the southern flank of the United States from marauding pirates and other intruders.

Once the pirates were eliminated, hurricanes and reefs presented the greatest threat to the region. Hoping to profit from salvaging sunken ships, New Englanders and British loyalists living in the Bahamas moved to Key West, expanding the population from 500 to 3,000. With the construction of lighthouses in the 1850s, shipwreck profiteering was quickly replaced by sponge harvesting. Sponging was replaced in turn by cigar manufacturing, ignited by a rapid influx of Cuban immigrants in the 1870s. By the 1880s, Key West was the richest city per capita in the United States.

Unfortunately, the town's good luck was short-lived, and by the 1930s Key West had become the poorest city in the United States. The Navy and Coast Guard set sail, cigar manufacturing wafted away to Tampa, and the sponge industry had long since dried up. The town was now at the mercy of the state of Florida. On orders from the governor, the city's problems were assigned to Julius Stone, the New Deal's Federal Relief Administrator in Florida. After visiting the dilapidated town, Stone concluded that Key West's salvation would be tourism. He organized a volunteer work force to clean the place up, and he employed federal funds to subsidize air service and the renovation of houses and hotels.

Stone's efforts helped turn Key West into a popular vacation destination. Tourists poured in as the local Conchs opened up their homes to visitors. The residents prospered until the Labor Day hurricane of 1935 when the railroad linking the Keys with Miami was blown away. It was not until World War II that things began to perk up again, only to be followed by another reversal of fortune. The poet Robert Frost captured the seesaw effect when he wrote, "It is a very, very dead place because it has died several times. It died as a resort of pirates, then as a house of smugglers and wreckers, then as a cigar manufacturer, then as a resort boomtown." Signs of tourism's return were evident by the 1950s when buildings were razed to accommodate increasing demand for vacant lots. More and more people were finding life in the slow lane appealing.

Summer Without End

There is a magical allure to Key West. Poet Wallace Stevens described it as a "summer without end." It has attracted not only tourists, but also writers, artists, and musicians. It is, according to one local observer, "an ideal place for writers, and more arrive each season, some 50 by last count--seven of them Pulitzer Prize Winners--making Key West their home for at least part of the year." Among them have been Truman Capote, John Hersey, and Gore Vidal. By all accounts, Ernest Hemingway did his best writing here, churning out A Farewell to Arms, Death in the Afternoon, Green Hills of Africa, To Have and Have Not, and For Whom the Bell Tolls in a nine year stretch during the 1930s. More recently, country songwriter turned calypso poet, Jimmy Buffett, moved from Nashville to Key West, where he captivated the imaginations of people seeking their own "Margaritaville."

Artists continue to find inspiration in Key West, but today it is a primarily a tourist town. Its live-and-let-live atmosphere attracts people of all persuasions, and its tropical latitude lends itself to a laid-back attitude. While Key West's residents number 28,000, 1.5 million outsiders visit each year. They snorkel the reefs, fish the waters, lay on the beaches, tour Hemingway's home and President Truman's "Little White House," visit shipwreck museums, watch street entertainers while waiting for the sunset on Mallory Square, eat seafood and key lime pie, and hang out at bars like Sloppy Joe's and Captain Tony's into the wee hours of the morning. The Chamber of Commerce does its part by hosting a variety of celebrations throughout the year, including the Halloween Fantasy Fest, Conch Republic Days, and Hemingway Days, when droves of old men with white beards invade the island to vie for the coveted Hemingway look-alike title.