KEY West the island sits upon a bed of limestone a hundred thousand years old. Key West the city has for its foundation poor judgments and worse luck that, less than two centuries ago, with painful regularity piled up seagoing vessels on the Florida Reef. That history created what attorney Charles Walker called “the city … More 067–The fiefdom
DISPLACED to Key West from the home of his boyhood, far from the old centers of culture, power, learning and earning, William A. Whitehead soon found that his new locale itself possessed a particular magnetism. An ideal site for scientific exploration both on its own and adjacent shores, the island attracted an array of “naturalists … More 042–The collectors (part 2)
IT was called a Golgotha for unsuspecting mariners. A land of disease and death. A distant, dismal necropolis. Key West’s early years saw many felled by sickness and entombed in its soil. Sent there to enforce the nation’s sovereignty and protect commerce, American soldiers and sailors were the main vectors of disease, and made up … More 017–Talk not to me of doctors