Welcome to the Key West Maritime Historical Society

Who we are: The Key West Maritime Historical Society is an all-volunteer, non-profit educational and cultural society. We are dedicated to the study and preservation of the rich maritime heritage of Key West and the Florida Keys. We organized as a Florida not-for-profit corporation in 1981. Since 1985 the IRS has granted us 501(c)(3) status.

What we do: The Society sponsors free public lectures, field trips, special events and interpretive projects to increase public awareness and appreciation of maritime history. We also publish the quarterly Florida Keys Sea Heritage Journal. That periodical is mailed directly to our members (and back issues can be seen here on our Journal Archive page). The Journal has been published for over seventeen years, and contains many articles and illustrations not available elsewhere. It is a tremendous aid in learning why the Keys are such a special place.

Email Newsletter icon, E-mail Newsletter icon, Email List icon, E-mail List icon Get email updates from KWMHS
For Email Marketing you can trust

Upcoming Event:

USING PREHISTORIC TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES TO MANUFACTURE REPLICAS OF SOUTH FLORIDA AND KEYS NATIVES ARTIFACTS

Talk and Demonstration by James Clupper

Date and Time: Wednesday, June 16, 2010, 7 p.m.

Place: Auditorium, Monroe County Public Library, Key West

Jim Clupper is the former manager of the Islamorada Public Library and, for the past ten years, a part-time employee of the Archaeological and Historical Conservancy in Miami. In the past, he has conducted tours of Keys native sites in the Upper Keys for members of our society. He currently resides in Upper Matecumbe. Jim has been making replicas of prehistoric artifacts for a number of years using replica tools and techniques along with raw materials that would have been available to South Florida and Keys native Americans. Materials used include wood, shell, stone, bone, ceramics, leather/rawhide, shark, and other fish teeth, sinew, and plant fibers. No modern tools are used in the work. Among the objects the natives made were dugout canoes. They were skilled seamen and navigators. Spanish documents reveal that they regularly voyaged to Cuba to trade.

This website is sponsored in part by the Florida Keys Council of the Arts www.keysarts.com, and was developed in partnership with Cooke Communications www.keysnews.com. Follow these links for additional sources of cultural information