90 miles from cuba, key west is closer to havana than miami. We learn more about the history of the island from the Monroe County librarian. We are in the Key West Branch of the Monroe County library. I house the archives for munro county. We try to keep all of the records we can, church records, plus some of the government records that other people have disposed of, a little bit of everything. I pulled out several things i thought would be of interest to the cspan audience. General items, various things that happened here over the many years we have been here. Key west had native americans who either died out or moved out. Most of most of the ones moved out at the end of the first spanish period. No one had a permanent population until the americans bought florida and commodore to keyorter was ordered west to establish the first naval station. Really established the first. Ivilization here followed by him was john the landwho bought from a spanish military officer. We consider the let
1832: John James Audubon arrived at Key West from the Dry Tortugas with specimens of terns, shells, conchs and coral. He claimed to have discovered five new species of birds
1829: The four owners of the Island of Key West — John Simonton, Pardon Greene, John Whitehead and John Fleming — signed an agreement for the division of the island.