The Key West citizen. [volume] (Key West, Fla.) 1879-current, 1939-12-18
OLIVER GRISWOLD
WRITES ARTICLE
Continued FROM Page One)

when the rest was mainly rough
tumble on a raw frontier.
The Southland'S conjuring rises
strong and impelling over the
swamplands around Savannah. A
night in Jacksonville beside the
hyacinth-matted,, black st. Johns
River is a dramatic prelude for
the next mornings swift en-
trance into st. Augustine's
crowded brilliance of palms and
flowers.
From there on down the East
Coast it is truly Florida, getting
SUMMER, warmer, greener, and
more frequently punctuated with
its fantastically-hued blossoms.
cit is a near thing to magic,
this swift change from the land
where foliage falls to these lati-
tudes where trees and sky and
sea hold summer colors per-
|petually.
"Old Florida visitors who have
seen most of the towns in the
state, and that is a good idea,
develop the custom of comparing.
We all have favorites. To those
who want to enjoy the full
gamut of experiences in Florida,
/ commend Key West. 1t is pure
contrast.
GAS the last inhabited island
of the long chain that bangles
from the tip of the peninsula, it
has by geographic accident, as
much as anything else, managed
to be neither the United States
nor Cuba. If so many people
didn't ask, I wouldn't bother to
verify; it is in the United States.
But it has absorbed enough of
both countries to be delightfully."-
confusing.
"By driving South out of Mi
ami you can in 165 miles get
one of the quickest presto
changeos of locale possible and
still stay in this country. Havana
is only 80 miles across the Straits
from Key West.
"a lady standing on the steps
of the u. S. Postoffice in Key
West told me that if she got in
volved in any sort of difficulty
she would go Immediately to the
American consul. You feel as for
egn as that. Washington feels
ten times as far away as it is.
"The Cuban political refugees
who a long time ago rushed
across the Straits of FLORIDA, plus
their cigar-making confreres who
came over in the intervening
years, plus the Conchs of British
ancestry who sailed in from the
Bahamas, plus Bahaman negroes,
plus Floridians who came down
from the mainland, plus lot of
Yankee writers and painters, and
a medley of business people, in
Ivalids, beachcombers, and tour
lists from the four quarters make
it a community that fits in no
bracket with another.
1T is a place that belongs to
the imagination, but with mod
ern plumbing, a primitive island
with good hotels.
"You arrive over long series
of flat, mangrove-garnished is
lands CONNECTED by causeways
and some of the longest bridges
in the world. The islands, or keys
as they are called in Florida, are
mostly uninhabited. By the time
you reach Key West, you have
absorbed the feeling of wilder
ness so thoroughly that it takes
that city of about 10000 inhabit-
ants several days to remove the
refreshing sensation of adventure
ing in the unknown.
"But you can revive that feel
ing by hiring one of the sports
fishing boats and going into the
Gulf Stream. Out beyond the
coral reefs that bare their back
bones above the sapphire water,
you hit the inky blue of the
Stream.
This is truly the last frontier
lunspoiled by man. He may have
ruined the forests with axe and
fire, made a dust bowl of the
Great Plains with his pillow, poi
soned the rivers with factories
and sewage, and sooted whole
counties with his steel mills. !
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