Things to Do in Key West: Hemingway, Mallory Square, and the Southernmost Point

The Hemingway Home & Museum: The House, and the Six-Toed Cats

The Hemingway Home & Museum, Ernest Hemingway's former Key West residence, is a real, currently operating attraction confirmed via its own dedicated site (hemingwayhome.com) and current third-party listings. It's the house where Hemingway lived through much of the 1930s and wrote a substantial share of his best-known work, and the property itself -- a Spanish Colonial-style house with a walled tropical garden -- is presented as a museum largely as Hemingway left it.

Its most famous residents today aren't historical -- they're currently alive. The museum maintains an active population of polydactyl (six-toed) cats, popularly said to descend from a six-toed cat gifted to Hemingway, and this is confirmed as real and ongoing via the museum's own dedicated "Our Cats" page and independent coverage from Ripley's Believe It or Not and Garden & Gun ("Hemingway's Six-Toed Cats Are Thriving and Plentiful in Key West"). Commonly cited population figures run in the range of several dozen cats, roughly half polydactyl -- a Fox News piece from the Hurricane Irma era cited 54 cats reported safe after that storm -- but this page did not independently confirm today's exact current count, and that number shifts over time as cats are born. Confirm the current headcount directly with the museum, which tracks and names each cat, before citing a specific figure.

This page did not independently confirm current admission pricing, hours, or tour-format specifics -- confirm directly at hemingwayhome.com before visiting, since museum hours and admission pricing are exactly the kind of detail that changes without national coverage.

Mallory Square's Sunset Celebration: A Real, Decades-Old Nightly Tradition

Mallory Square's "Sunset Celebration" is a real, long-running, currently active nightly event, not a one-off tourist gimmick -- confirmed via its own dedicated site (sunsetcelebration.org), which brands it "Key West's Longest Running Arts Festival." The Studios of Key West has published retrospective coverage referencing "40 Years of Sunsets," putting the tradition's roots at roughly the mid-1980s, though this page did not independently confirm the exact founding year -- treat "a real, decades-old, nightly tradition" as the safe claim and confirm the precise founding date directly with sunsetcelebration.org before citing one.

The event itself is a nightly gathering of street performers, artisans, and food vendors along the Mallory Square waterfront timed to the sunset, drawing both visitors and a genuine local following -- it's free to attend and open-air, distinct from a ticketed show. This page did not independently confirm current specific performer lineups, vendor rosters, or any seasonal schedule variation -- confirm current details directly with sunsetcelebration.org or the City of Key West before planning an evening around it.

The Southernmost Point Marker: Famous, Photographed, and Not What It Claims

The concrete, red-black-and-yellow buoy-shaped marker at the foot of Whitehead Street is one of Key West's single most-photographed landmarks, confirmed as real and current via the City of Key West's own facilities page and a dense cluster of independent travel-press coverage. Its branding -- "90 miles to Cuba" -- is a real, geographically substantiated claim repeated across nearly every source covering it.

Here's the honest part many visitor guides skip: the marker is widely and repeatedly reported as not actually marking the true southernmost point of the island, the city, or the continental United States. The commonly repeated explanation is that the actual southernmost accessible point of Key West sits on land belonging to Naval Air Station Key West / the Truman Annex, which is closed to public access -- making the publicly reachable concrete marker a stand-in landmark rather than the literal southernmost coordinate. This page did not independently confirm the exact distance or coordinate difference between the marker and the true southernmost point via a primary source -- treat this as genuine, widely documented local lore (there's even a long-running Tripadvisor forum thread titled "southernmost point debunked?"), not a single settled technical fact with an exact number attached.

The marker has its own current, dated maintenance story worth knowing before you plan a visit around it: it was damaged by Hurricane Irma in 2017 and restored, and multiple 2026-dated sources (Keys Weekly's "And the Point Is? Substitute Southernmost Buoy Shifts to New Spot, Temporarily," NBC 6 South Florida's coverage of the buoy being repaired and temporarily replaced, and a Yahoo News piece headlined "Key West's giant buoy will vanish for a year") indicate the original marker has been undergoing repair, with a substitute buoy standing in at a temporary location in the meantime. This page could not independently confirm the exact current status -- whether the original marker has been reinstalled, is still under repair, or the substitute is still in place -- via a fetched primary source this pass. Confirm the marker's current physical status and location directly with the City of Key West or a current local source before planning a photo trip specifically around it; the substitute buoy, if still in place, may not be at the familiar Whitehead Street spot.

Duval Street: Old Town's Main Artery, Honestly

Duval Street runs through the heart of Old Town Key West and functions as the city's best-known commercial and nightlife spine -- bars, restaurants, shops, and galleries lined up along roughly a mile connecting the Gulf side of the island near Mallory Square to the Atlantic side near the Southernmost Point marker. It's real, current, and central to how most first-time visitors experience the city on foot.

An honest note worth including here: Keys Weekly has run coverage on "empty storefronts" increasing in Key West, a real, dated local story consistent with the workforce-housing and cost-of-living pressures this site's other Key West pages cover -- a signal that Duval Street's retail mix shifts over time and isn't a static, unchanging strip. This page did not independently confirm a current, specific vacancy rate or which named businesses have opened or closed most recently -- Duval Street's tenant mix turns over regularly enough that a specific "what's there" list would go stale quickly; confirm current businesses directly before planning a specific stop.

Fort Zachary Taylor Historic State Park: A Civil War Fort and Key West's Best Beach

Fort Zachary Taylor Historic State Park is a real, currently operating Florida state park confirmed via its own dedicated Florida State Parks page (floridastateparks.org) and the City of Key West's own facilities listing. The park centers on a 19th-century masonry coastal fortress built to defend the harbor, with public access to both the historic fort structure and a beach widely regarded by independent travel coverage (and repeated local recommendation) as among the best swimming beaches in Key West -- a genuine point of differentiation from the narrower sand strips found closer to downtown.

This page did not independently confirm current hours, admission pricing, or parking-lot capacity limits (a real practical constraint at Florida state parks generally) for Fort Zachary Taylor -- confirm directly at floridastateparks.org or the City of Key West's facilities page before planning a visit, since park hours and entrance-fee structures are exactly the kind of detail that changes without national coverage.