Key West is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

Dubuque County Dubuque County is a County (United States), county located in the U.S. state of Iowa. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 99,266, making it the eighth-most populous county in Iowa. The county seat is Dubuque, Io ...

Iowa Iowa ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the upper Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west; Wisconsin to the northeast, Ill ...

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

, near the extreme southern end of the city of

Dubuque Dubuque (, ) is a city in Dubuque County, Iowa, United States, and its county seat. The population was 59,667 at the 2020 United States census. The city lies along the Mississippi River at the junction of Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin, a region ...

. Parts of the community are now within the city of Dubuque, while others are unincorporated. Owing to the presence of U.S. Highways 151, 61, and 52, and the nearby Dubuque Regional Airport, the area is home to a growing number of businesses. Some of these are high-tech companies being built in the Dubuque Technology Park, to the east. Development in the area will likely increase rapidly following the planned construction of the city's Southwest Arterial. The village does have several local establishments that allow it to maintain a certain degree of autonomy. It has its own church, St. Joseph's - Key West Catholic Church, a school (Table Mound Elementary), a cemetery ( Mt. Olivet), a

Fire Fire is the rapid oxidation of a fuel in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction Product (chemistry), products. Flames, the most visible portion of the fire, are produced in the combustion re ...

EMS Ems or EMS may refer to: Places and rivers * Domat/Ems, a Swiss municipality in the canton of Grisons * Ems (river) (Eems), a river in northwestern Germany and northeastern Netherlands that discharges in the Dollart Bay * Ems (Eder), a river o ...

department, and a hotel/motel.

History

The town of Key West was settled in 1834, the year after Dubuque's founding. There was plenty of timber, prairie land and streams for water in section 12 of Table Mound Township, in Dubuque County, on the road that became the Old Military Road. Key West's population was 56 in 1902, and 52 in 1915. The town was named because it was considered the main egress from Dubuque westward. The population was 60 in 1940.

Education

St. Joseph School, under the

Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dubuque The Metropolitan Archdiocese of Dubuque () is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or archdiocese, of the Catholic Church in the northeastern quarter of the state of Iowa in the United States. The Diocese of Dubuque was erected in 1837 and ...

, was in Key West.

Notes

Information on Key West's beginnings is from the book My Old Dubuque by Len Kruse {{authority control Unincorporated communities in Dubuque County, Iowa Unincorporated communities in Iowa 1834 establishments in Michigan Territory