Key West Cemetery

Description

It is estimated that as many as 100,000 people are buried there, many more than the 30,000 residents who currently live on the island.It is in the northwest section of the Old Town area of the island.HistoryIn 1847 it was established at its current location after an 1846 hurricane washed dead bodies from the earlier cemetery out of the coastal sand dunes on Whitehead Point near the West Martello Towers. An African Memorial Cemetery was dedicated beside the West Martello Tower in 2009. Slaves, ill from the sea voyage to slavery in "The New World," were buried there prior to the US Civil War.In 2005, the cemetery was among those profiled in the PBS documentary A Cemetery Special.