Key West Historic Seaport

The Key West Historic Seaport features a cluster of weathered wooden piers and docks that jut into the harbor. For decades, this was the heart of the island’s turtle canning industry. In the late nineteenth century, schooners hauled green sea turtles here by the thousands to be slaughtered and packed into tins for shipping. A local captain named William Knight once kept a massive turtle crawl right here, where tourists paid a nickel to watch men wrestle the giant creatures into the cannery.