For its first decades Key West got rich off disaster. Ships ran aground on the coral reef offshore with such regularity that salvaging the wrecks — "wrecking" — became a licensed, court-supervised industry, and the men who hauled cargo off the reefs made the town, by the 1830s, the wealthiest city per capita in the United States. Salt ponds, sponging, and sea-turtling followed. Those fortunes built the first grand houses of Old Town and gave Key West a worldly, seafaring character it never lost.
Key West is Mile Marker 0 — the end of the road and the start of the Conch Republic, the southernmost city in the country, ninety miles from Cuba, where the wreckers got rich off the reef and the sunset is a nightly event. Our Key West designs gather that into wearable form. Wear the Conch Republic. Wear Mile Marker 0. One Human Family.
Why People Visit Key West
Key West rewards travelers who want history, water, and a freewheeling island culture rather than only a beach — the Southernmost Point, the Conch Republic, the literary and presidential houses, and a compact Old Town you can walk end to end. People come for the sunset at Mallory Square and the bars of Duval, for the Hemingway and Truman landmarks and the wrecking-era treasure, and for an easygoing day at Mile Marker 0 where the Overseas Highway, and the country, finally run out of road.
