History of the Southernmost Point Buoy

Millions of people have lined up for a photo with the striped concrete buoy at the end of Whitehead Street, but few know how it got there. Its story takes in undersea cables, stolen signs, a tongue-in-cheek secession and more than one hurricane. Here is how an ordinary street corner became one of the most recognized landmarks in the United States.

Long before it was a tourist stop, the corner of South and Whitehead Streets was a working piece of infrastructure. In 1921 an underwater telephone cable was laid between Key West and Havana, and the small cement hut that still stands beside the buoy housed its connection. Key West’s closeness to Cuba made it a natural jumping-off point for telegraph and telephone links long before anyone thought to celebrate that closeness with a monument.

By the late 1960s, a simple painted wooden sign marked the spot. Around 1970 it read “The Southernmost Point, of Southernmost City, Key West Fla.” By 1982 the wording had become “The Southernmost Point, In USA, Key West Fla.” The famous “90 miles to Cuba” claim was not on the main sign at all. It appeared on a separate sign mounted on the fence nearby.

The wooden signs had one big weakness: they were easy to carry off. Local lore says they disappeared as souvenirs often enough that the city decided it needed a marker that nobody could fit in a suitcase.

The buoy’s lettering has changed with repaintings over the years. The current version reads:

THE CONCH REPUBLIC
90 MILES TO CUBA
SOUTHERNMOST POINT CONTINENTAL U.S.A.
KEY WEST, FL
HOME OF THE SUNSET

“90 Miles to Cuba” moved from the fence sign onto the buoy itself at a later repainting, and “Home of the Sunset” was also added later. Both claims deserve a closer look. See Is Cuba Really 90 Miles Away? and Is It Really the Southernmost Point?

The buoy sits a few feet from the ocean, and salt, sun and storms are hard on concrete and paint. The Key West Public Works Department maintains it and has repainted it many times. Some of the milestones:

• 2005: A full refurbishment, in the same year Hurricane Wilma sent storm surge flooding across much of Key West.
• 2017: Hurricane Irma, a Category 4 storm when it made landfall in the Lower Keys that September, damaged the marker. The city rehired Danny Acosta to restore his original work, and the freshly repainted buoy was back on display within weeks as a symbol of the island’s recovery.
• 2022: On New Year’s Day, vandals caused extensive damage to the paint. Camera footage from the area helped police identify two suspects, who faced criminal mischief charges.
• 2025 to 2027: The buoy was boxed in while the city replaced the seawall behind it and began rebuilding the surrounding streets and plaza. A full-size replica at 1400 Duval Street stands in for it. Follow along on our construction updates page.

Geographically, the buoy is not quite the southernmost anything. As a symbol, though, it does exactly what it was built to do. It marks the end of the road, the edge of the continental United States, and the start of the open water between Florida and the Caribbean. People wait in line under the Florida sun for a photo with a painted concrete cylinder because of what it stands for: you made it all the way to the bottom of the map.

You can see that line, and everything else that happens at the corner, any time on the Southernmost Webcam.

Sources: Wikipedia: Southernmost Point Buoy, WUSF (2017), NBC 6 Miami.