From Key Largo to Key West, the Florida Keys are a wonderful place to spend your winter vacation. There's something for everyone in the Keys. On our visit in February to Key Largo we ventured down to visit historic Key West. Our family has been escaping the cold winters of New York for the past six years. Key West is not new to us. We always make the trip down to the southernmost spot in the continental America. Key West has a tropical and Caribbean feel, this island city , 90 miles from Cuba.

President Harry Truman, Ernest Hemingway and Tennessee Williams have made Key West their home.  Most recent residents are Jimmy Buffet and Kelly McGillis. With warm temperatures, tropical foliage, spectacular sunsets, great restaurants, delightful shopping and friendly people all around the town make Key West a great place to live.
   
Thanks to Sharon Wells' " Walking and Biking Guide to Historic Key West" We arrived at the aboveground, whitewashed graveyard in the Old Town section of Key West. There are 75,000 graves in the still active cemetery. Walk in and you encounter the U.S.S. Maine Plot, dedicated on March 15, 1900. A bronze sailor overlooks a plain of white marble markers honoring 27 sailors killed in the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana Harbor.

As we moved on we came to an archway with the inscription "A Los Martitires de Cuba" (To the Cuban Martyrs). This sacred plot is a memorial to the slain heroes of an unsuccessful 1868 Cuban insurrection against Spain. As we walked into the Catholic sector, The Toppino Mausoleum stands out from all the graves in this section. Toppino and Sons Construction Company built the Overseas Highway from Miami. Next plot is the Gato family. Eduardo H. Gato was a leader of the American cigar industry and this industry made Key West a leader in cigar production in the early 1900s.

Our first quirky headstone is that of E. Lariz (1923-1986) and reads "Devoted Fan of Singer Julio Iglesias."  We now encounter a statue of a pet deer named "Elfina." It is the Otto's family plot. Dr. Otto served as a medical officer at Fort Jefferson (located in the Dry Tortugas- 68 miles west of Key West). Also included in the Otto's family plot are the graves of three Yorkshire terriers. We move out of the Catholic sector into the Jewish sector.

We now come to the most visited spot in the cemetery tour, a large white crypt of B.Pearl Roberts. She was a local hypochondriac, on her crypt is inscribed "I Told You I Was Sick." Today it was wall to wall tourists getting their pictures taking in front of the crypt.

Back out of the Jewish sector, we walk over to the box tomb of Sloppy Joe Russell, Key West's famous bar owner who died while fishing off Cuba with Hemingway. Passing the Narvarro family plot are two towering angels. The epitaph on the back reads" Sacred to the memory of a brokenhearted mother."

As our tour starts to wind down, we find the grave of Abraham Lincoln Sawyer, a 40-inch midget. He called himself "General" as he traveled with carnivals in the late 1800s. He died in 1939 at the age of 77. His final wish was to be buried in a full-sized tomb.

Key West Cemetery, just like the town, is rich in history and full of the crazy characters that make this town so much fun!

Mike, Investigative Reporter for Mystical Universe