Ernest Hemingway - Key West, FL - Statues of Historic Figures on Waymarking.com

Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, IL in 1899. During World War I, Hemingway served as a volunteer in the American Red Cross Ambulance Corps, at which time he was severely wounded. In 1926 he published his first novel The Sun Also Rises, which won international acclaim. Returning to Europe in April 1928 via Havana he arrived in Key West on the Peninsular & Occidental Steamship Company. He had planned to leave town in a new Ford but it was not ready, forcing him to spend some time in the city. Finding the atmosphere to his liking and the fishing excellent, he decided to visit again and took up permanent residency. In Key West, Hemingway finished A Farewell to Arms, based on his wartime experience in Italy and his love of nurse Agnes von Kurosky. He then wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Green Hills of Africa, Death in the Afternoon, and To Have and Have Not, his autobiographical novel about Key West. In 1931 he bought a house at 907 Whitehead Street that had been built in 1851 by Asa Tift. He owned the house until his death but left Key West for Cuba in 1939. The house was sold by the family in 1963 and opened in 1964 as a museum. Today it is the most popular tourist attraction in on the island. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1952 and the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954. Hemingway's presence on the island and the literary and famous friends he attracted to Key West while here helped Key West become known and visited by countless others.