Key West City Map Poster

About Key West

The official city motto is "One Human Family". The name "Key West" comes from a Spanish word for "small key", which was the description by Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda in 1575, who had visited earlier. It refers to the island being literally made up of little keys, small islands or coral reefs close together. For hundreds of years it was known as Cayo Hueso (Spanish for 'Bone Island'), and some say it got its present name from early English explorers who used what they thought were old Spanish charts and maps that labeled this island as Key West; however, there are no actual records confirming this theory. The U.