Key West
The southernmost city in the continental U.S.
Key West is the southernmost city in the continental United States, perched at the far end of the Florida Keys, closer to Cuba than to Miami. An island town of pastel conch houses, palms, and a famous buoy marking the southernmost point, it sits some 90 miles from Havana and is reached from the mainland only by the Overseas Highway, which island-hops across 42 bridges.
Surrounded by the warm, shallow waters where the Gulf of Mexico meets the Atlantic and the only living coral barrier reef in the continental U.S., Key West has long drawn writers, sailors, and sun-seekers - Ernest Hemingway among them. Its subtropical climate is the mildest in the country, almost never touching freezing.
Related
- Dry Tortugas National ParkFort Jefferson and remote coral keys 70 miles west of Key West
- Conch RepublicKey West’s tongue-in-cheek secession of 1982
- FloridaThe Sunshine State, a low subtropical peninsula
- Seven Mile BridgeThe Overseas Highway's long leap through the Florida Keys
- The Florida KeysA coral archipelago curving off the tip of Florida
- The Overseas HighwayThe road that hops across the Florida Keys
- U.S. Route 1The East Coast's Maine-to-Florida highway
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