What to Know Before You Go to Key West: Parking, the Free Duval Loop, Sunset and the Dry Tortugas Ferry

KEY WEST · WHAT TO KNOW · MILE MARKER 0

The Overseas Highway ends at a street corner. Mile Marker 0 stands at Whitehead and Fleming, the southern end of a route that runs roughly 2,370 miles north to Fort Kent, Maine (published totals vary between 2,369 and 2,390, so take the order of magnitude and not the digits). Around that corner sits Old Town, the largest wooden historic district in North America, flat and compact enough that the city’s own advice for covering it is feet or a bicycle.

The regrets visitors come home with are small and fixable. Nobody wishes they had skipped the island. They wish they had known that the rental car becomes a paid problem the morning after it arrives, that the sunset show starts long before the sun goes anywhere, that the ferry to Dry Tortugas closes check-in at 7:30 a.m., and that whether the waterfront is quiet or shoulder-to-shoulder was settled by a law passed in Tallahassee.

On this page

• Parking rates in Old TownMeters at $3.00, garage at $48 a day
• Sunset Celebration start timeAbout two hours before sunset, nightly
• Cruise ship limits in Key WestThe 2020 vote and SB 1194
• Dry Tortugas ferry departure time8 a.m., check-in before 7:30
• Key lime pie originsKey West, and Florida’s state pie since 2006
• Best month for Key West weatherMonth by month, with the NOAA normals
• A three-day plan for the islandThree days, hour by hour

Two numbers frame the suitcase: the January normal high is 75.8°F, the July normal high 90.2°F, with 1.83 inches of rain in an average January against 3.63 in July. Every climate figure here comes from NOAA’s 1991-2020 monthly normals for station USW00012836, the gauge at Key West International Airport. Which of those months suits you is a longer argument, made calendar by calendar in the best time to visit.

Do you need a car in Key West?

Old Town is built around walking. The island is flat, the historic district is dense, and almost nothing you came for sits outside it. Nothing about the drive down prepares you for how fast the car stops being useful: you arrive after about four hours from Miami, roughly 155 miles, six to eight hours with the stops the road deserves, and then you spend the week inside a few blocks of wooden porches.

The rates make the case better than any lecture. Street meters run $3.00 an hour. The Old Town Parking Garage charges $6 an hour or $48 a day plus tax. The Mallory Square lot asks $7 an hour or $48 a day with a ten-hour maximum, and the Key West Bight lot $5 an hour or $40 a day. Three nights of garage parking outprices most excursions on the island. Those are the city’s published figures, read on September 7, 2026, and they move.

The Duval Loop bus is free and calls at 18 stops through Old Town, which covers most of what the car would have done. Its timetable is where sources part company: one has it every 20 minutes from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., another every 30 minutes early in the morning and then every 15 until midnight. Read the frequency off the sign at the stop instead of trusting either version, and remember the Loop does not serve the airport.

What still wants wheels is everything back up the chain: Bahia Honda, the restored two-mile span of the old Seven Mile Bridge with its car park at the Marathon end (there is no safe place to stop on the highway bridge itself), and the rest of the day trips. One tidy answer is to fly into EYW and rent for the one day you need it, rather than paying to store a car all week.

What time is sunset at Mallory Square?

The Sunset Celebration at Mallory Square runs every night of the year, weather permitting. It is less an event than an address that fills up daily with jugglers, cat trainers, tarot readers and a few hundred people holding drinks. There is no ticket and no season, which is why first-timers assume it can be caught on the way past.

It begins roughly two hours before the sun goes down and holds on until dusk has faded out. That makes the sunset time itself the number worth knowing: on January 15 the sun sets at 6:01 p.m., on July 15 at 8:19 p.m., with 10 hours 49 minutes of daylight in the first case and 13 hours 33 minutes in the second (computed for the 15th by sunrise-sunset.org and converted to Eastern time). Turning up at the advertised minute means turning up for the last act.

Dinner pays the price either way. In January the whole performance sits between four and six-thirty, exactly when restaurants are empty and a table needs no negotiation, so eat afterward. In July it runs past 8 p.m., and the table you want at nine is the table everybody wants at nine: reserve it before you leave the hotel, or eat early and walk over for the final half hour, when the square thins and the pelicans take the pier back.

Do cruise ships still dock in Key West?

In November 2020 Key West voters approved three limits on cruise traffic: a cap of 1,500 disembarking passengers a day, a ban on ships carrying more than 1,300 people, and docking priority for lines with the best environmental and health records. All three won at the ballot box, and for a while the island thought the question was settled.

None of the three is in force. Governor Ron DeSantis signed SB 1194, under which a local ballot initiative or referendum may not restrict maritime commerce in Florida ports, and the law was written to apply retroactively to those November votes. So the plain answer is yes: the ships dock.

On the ground that gives the waterfront two moods. With a ship alongside, the blocks between the piers and Duval Street absorb a few thousand extra visitors, most of them moving fast because they are on a clock. Without one, the same streets read like a small Gulf town that happens to own a lot of bars.

Timing beats avoidance. Ship passengers are back aboard by evening, which is why the sunset crowd skews local and overnight. Front-load the indoor and ticketed things: the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum takes walk-ins from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day, $19 adult and $7 child with under-sixes free, and nine o’clock there is a wholly different visit from one o’clock. Fort Zachary Taylor opens at 8 a.m. and runs to sundown, 365 days a year, with the fort closing at 5 p.m.

Your own date is the part nobody can promise. How many ships call, and how large they are, follows a port schedule that shifts month to month, and we could not source a reliable figure for it: ask your hotel or check the port’s published calendar before you build a quiet morning into the plan.

What time does the Dry Tortugas ferry leave?

The Yankee Freedom III sails from Key West at 8 a.m. daily, with check-in before 7:30 a.m. The 2026 adult fare is about $250 and covers the park entrance fee, snorkeling gear, breakfast and lunch. There is no road or bridge to the park: it sits 70 miles west, reachable only by ferry or seaplane, and the boat sells out weeks ahead, so book a month out at minimum. The fort, the moat and the swimming are detailed in our Dry Tortugas guide.

That check-in rewrites the night before. A 7:30 appointment at the dock is not a vacation hour, and the crowd at Mallory Square does not thin out early. Sleeping in Old Town within walking distance of the terminal buys the difference back, and the where-to-stay guide sorts that out. It also argues against putting the ferry on your first morning after the drive from Miami, or on your last, when a late return and a flight out of EYW make a nervous pair.

Where did key lime pie originate?

Key West, reportedly, in the late nineteenth century. Florida made the claim official in 2006, when key lime pie was named the state’s official pie. The recipe carries its own history: it leans on sweetened condensed milk because fresh milk and refrigeration were scarce down the chain until the 1930s, and the acid of the juice sets the filling with barely any help from an oven.

A real slice is therefore pale yellow, never green, and firm rather than fluffy. Green filling means food coloring, which is the tell most visitors miss until someone points at it. Meringue or whipped cream on top is entirely legitimate. A lime-tinted glow is decoration pretending to be fruit.

One thing stays unpriced here. We have no verified figure for a slice, and no sourced ranking of the counters, cafés and bakeries selling one, so neither gets invented: that comparison happens by walking in and asking where the staff buy theirs. Addresses worth a detour are gathered in things to do in Key West, and the pie travels badly, so eat it where you buy it.

The last word

Key West punishes the wrong hour far more than the wrong plan. The car you drove 155 miles is the least useful object you own once you park it, and the meter runs at $3.00 an hour whether you use it or not. Set two alarms: one at 7:30 for the ferry morning, one two hours before sunset. Everything else gets decided on foot, which is how you end up at Whitehead and Fleming reading a marker that says 0 and doing the arithmetic to Fort Kent, Maine.

Sources & data for this guide

• Mile Marker 0 at Whitehead and Fleming, length of US-1 · Atlas Obscura and Key West Travel Guide · sources give 2,369 or 2,390 miles, so we state the order of magnitude · checked Sep 11, 2026
• Parking rates: meters, Old Town Parking Garage, Mallory Square lot, Key West Bight lot · City of Key West Parking Department · rates change · checked Sep 11, 2026
• Duval Loop: free, 18 stops, no airport service · City of Key West and local car-free guides · frequency and operating hours differ sharply between sources, so we give the full range and point to the stop sign · checked Sep 11, 2026
• Old Town as the largest wooden historic district in North America, walkable and flat · local guides and City of Key West · checked Sep 11, 2026
• Sunset Celebration nightly, starting about two hours before sunset · sunsetcelebration.org · checked Sep 11, 2026
• Sunset times and daylight length for Jan 15 and Jul 15 · sunrise-sunset.org, converted to America/New_York · checked Sep 11, 2026
• January and July normals (75.8°F, 90.2°F, 1.83 in, 3.63 in) · NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 monthly normals, station USW00012836, Key West International Airport · checked Sep 11, 2026
• November 2020 referendum limits and SB 1194 preemption · Florida Politics and Seatrade Cruise · the ballot threshold was ships carrying more than 1,300 people · checked Sep 11, 2026
• Yankee Freedom III departure, check-in and 2026 adult fare · Yankee Freedom / drytortugas.com · fare subject to change · checked Sep 11, 2026
• Dry Tortugas access by ferry or seaplane, 70 miles west · National Park Service · checked Sep 11, 2026
• Hemingway Home hours and admission ($19 adult, $7 child, free under 6) · hemingwayhome.com · checked Sep 11, 2026
• Fort Zachary Taylor entry fees and hours · Florida State Parks · checked Sep 11, 2026
• Hurricane season dates and the September 10 peak · NOAA National Hurricane Center · checked Sep 11, 2026
• Key lime pie origin and the 2006 state designation · Britannica and Wikipedia · the origin is reported, not documented · checked Sep 11, 2026
• Two figures we could not source and therefore do not give: how many cruise ships call on a given date, and the price of a slice of pie · ask the port and the counter.