Is Cuba Really 90 Miles from Key West?

“90 Miles to Cuba” may be the most quoted line in Key West. It is painted on the Southernmost Point Buoy, printed on T-shirts, and repeated by every trolley guide on the island. So how accurate is it? It is close, but the real answer depends on which kind of mile you use and which part of Cuba you are measuring to.

• To the closest point of Cuba’s coast: about 94 statute miles (the everyday miles on your car’s odometer). That is about 82 nautical miles, or 151 kilometers.
• To Havana: a bit farther, roughly 105 statute miles, which works out to about 90 nautical miles.

So “90 miles” is either a friendly rounding of the distance to the nearest Cuban shore or an accurate figure for Havana, as long as you use sailors’ miles. Either way, it is close enough to have stuck for more than half a century.

A statute mile is 5,280 feet, the unit used on land in the United States. A nautical mile is about 6,076 feet, roughly 15 percent longer, and it is the unit used at sea and in the air because it ties neatly to latitude: one nautical mile equals one minute of arc along a line of longitude. In an island town whose history was built by sailors, wreckers and fishermen, measuring the distance to Havana in nautical miles makes a lot of sense.

That short distance shaped Key West’s history. In the 1800s, Cuban cigar makers turned Key West into one of the cigar capitals of the world, and Cuban independence leader José Martí rallied supporters here. The San Carlos Institute on Duval Street, founded in 1871, still honors that heritage. In 1921 an underwater telephone cable linked the two islands, running from the hut that still sits beside the buoy. In 1927, the first scheduled international flight of the new Pan American Airways took off from Key West bound for Havana. And during the 1980 Mariel boatlift, Key West became the main landing point for tens of thousands of Cubans arriving by boat.

Cuban food, music and family ties are woven through daily life on the island, so the “90 miles” on the buoy is about more than geography.

The claim is older than the buoy itself. In the days of the wooden Southernmost Point signs, “90 miles to Cuba” was posted on a separate sign on the fence beside the marker. When the concrete buoy went up in 1983, the phrase eventually moved onto the buoy during a later repainting, and it has been one of its headline lines ever since. Read more in our history of the Southernmost Point Buoy, or watch the view toward Cuba any time on the live webcam.

Sources: Wikipedia: Southernmost Point Buoy, Wikipedia: Straits of Florida.