Key West is an island in the Straits of Florida on the North American continent at the southernmost tip of the Florida Keys. The island is about 90 miles (140 km) from Cuba.
Key West is politically within the limits of the city of Key West, Monroe County, Florida, United States. The city also occupies portions of nearby islands.
The island is about 4 miles (6.4 km) long and 2 miles (3.2 km) wide. In the late 1950s many of the large salt ponds on the eastern side were filled in, nearly doubling the original land mass of the island. The island is 3,370 acres (13.6 km2) in area.
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Famous quotes containing the words key and/or west:
“At the last, tenderly,
From the walls of the powerful fortress’d house,
From the clasp of the knitted locks, from the keep of the well-closed doors,
Let me be wafted.
Let me glide noiselessly forth;
With the key of softness unlock the locks—with a whisper,
Set ope the doors O soul.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)