Ahead of you lies the Key West Cemetery, officially the Historic Key West City Cemetery, a 19-acre place at the foot of Solares Hill in the northwest section of Old Town. It is estimated that as many as 100,000 people are buried here, far more than the roughly 30,000 residents who live on the island today. The cemetery was established at this location in 1847 after an 1846 hurricane washed bodies from the earlier burial ground out of the coastal sand dunes on Whitehead Point near the West Martello Towers.
Nearby, an African Memorial Cemetery was dedicated beside the West Martello Tower in 2009; slaves ill from the sea voyage to slavery in "The New World" were buried here prior to the US Civil War. In 2005 the grounds were profiled in the PBS documentary A Cemetery Special. Look closely at the stones: one headstone shows a birthdate of 1792, another records a death in 1843.
You will also find familiar names and epitaphs — "Sloppy" Joe Russell (1889-1941), B.P. "Pearl" Roberts (1929-1979) with "I Told you I was Sick.", Gloria M. Russell (1926-2000) with "I’m just resting my eyes.", and Miriam Albury (1882-1933), whose grave held a stuffed bunny for 14+ years. Picture the markers dotting the slope of Solares Hill, and the West Martello Tower with its adjacent African Memorial nearby.