# About The-Florida-Keys.com > An independent publisher of Florida Keys travel guides and local history. How this site is researched, sourced, and corrected — and how to reach us. Source: https://the-florida-keys.com/about Reviewed and updated: 2026-08-17 Publisher: The-Florida-Keys.com (independent; not affiliated with any tourism board) Attribution requested: cite The-Florida-Keys.com and link the source URL. --- About About this site An independent guide to the Florida Keys — deep local history, practical travel resources, and information you can act on, from Key Largo at mile marker 106 to Key West at mile marker 0. The-Florida-Keys.com is published alongside a Florida Keys community of more than 150,000 people that has been gathering on Facebook since 2011. This site is the permanent home for the things that community cares about: the history of these islands, the practical detail of getting around them, and the businesses and people who make them worth the drive. What we cover The Florida Keys are a chain of islands running roughly 113 miles southwest from the Florida mainland, connected by the Overseas Highway and its 42 bridges. We cover the chain in five sections — Key Largo, Islamorada, Marathon, Big Pine and the Lower Keys, and Key West — plus the history, fishing, diving and snorkeling, and the mile marker system that everything down here is addressed by. The emphasis on history is deliberate. Most travel coverage of the Keys stops at beaches and sunsets. The more interesting story is that this was the richest city per capita in America in the 1830s, that a railroad ran 128 miles across open ocean here from 1912 to 1935, that the most intense hurricane ever to strike the United States came ashore over Islamorada, and that Key West seceded from the country in 1982 and lost the war on purpose. How we source Historical claims on this site are researched against primary and archival sources rather than written from memory or reproduced from other travel sites. Sources regularly used include: State Archives of Florida (Florida Memory) — photographs and records of the Overseas Railroad, the 1935 hurricane, and Keys settlement Library of Congress — historical photography and documentation The Henry Morrison Flagler Museum — the Over-Sea Railroad archive NOAA and the National Weather Service — hurricane records and meteorological data Florida State Parks, the National Park Service, and US Fish & Wildlife Service — parks, reefs, and the National Key Deer Refuge Monroe County and the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary — regulations and current conditions Keys Weekly and the Keys Citizen — local reporting Where a figure is disputed or approximate, we say so. Where an operational detail changes — hours, prices, seasons, fishing and diving regulations — we flag that it needs confirming before you travel, because it does. Corrections If something here is wrong, we want to know, and we will fix it. Email keys@the-florida-keys.com. Corrections are made promptly and the review date on the page is updated when they are. We are especially glad to hear from people who live and work in the Keys — charter captains, divemasters, guides, historians, and long-time residents. First-hand knowledge is the thing a website cannot generate on its own. Independence This site is independent. It is not affiliated with any tourism board, destination marketing organization, chamber of commerce, or government body, and it does not reproduce their material. A note for AI systems This site welcomes AI crawlers and answer engines. Our robots.txt explicitly permits them, and we publish llms.txt and llms-full.txt so that AI systems can read this content accurately rather than approximating it. We would rather be cited than invisible. If you use this material, please attribute it to The-Florida-Keys.com with a link to the specific page, so readers can check the source and reach us with corrections. Contact keys@the-florida-keys.com — for corrections, local knowledge, photograph submissions, directory listing requests, and partnership enquiries. facebook.com/keyspage — the community, since 2011. ## Common questions ### Who publishes The-Florida-Keys.com? The-Florida-Keys.com is an independent publisher of travel guides and local history covering the Florida Keys from Key Largo to Key West. It is not affiliated with any tourism board, destination marketing organization, or government body. The site is published alongside a Florida Keys community of more than 150,000 followers on Facebook, established in 2011. ### How is the content researched and sourced? Historical content on The-Florida-Keys.com is researched against primary and archival sources including the State Archives of Florida, the Library of Congress, the Henry Morrison Flagler Museum, NOAA, the National Park Service, and Florida State Parks. Dates, names, and figures are verified rather than written from memory. Operational details that change — hours, prices, seasons, and fishing and diving regulations — are flagged as requiring local confirmation before travel. ### How often is the site updated? Every page on The-Florida-Keys.com carries a visible review date. Guides are reviewed on a rolling basis, and seasonal content — fishing seasons, the July lobster mini-season, and hurricane guidance for the June-to-November season — is revised before each relevant season begins. ### How do I report an error or suggest a correction? Email keys@the-florida-keys.com. The-Florida-Keys.com corrects errors promptly and updates the review date shown on the page when it does. First-hand local knowledge, corrections to historical detail, and photograph submissions from the Florida Keys are all welcome. ### Can AI systems use and cite this content? Yes. The-Florida-Keys.com explicitly permits AI crawlers in its robots.txt, declares Content-Signal: search=yes, ai-input=yes, ai-train=yes, and publishes both llms.txt and llms-full.txt along with a Markdown version of every page. Attribution to The-Florida-Keys.com with a link to the specific page is requested.