In the summer of 1934, in the shade of the biggest houses in Florida, people could no longer pay the tax on the roofs over their heads. On the second of July, the men who ran Key West did something no American city had ever chosen to do: they signed the city away, handing its government, its police, its streets, and its debts to the state, because they could no longer afford to run any of it. Fifty years earlier, this had been the wealthiest city per person in the entire United States, built on a bare coral rock ninety miles from Havana. This is how it lost everything.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History... https://www.american-rails.com/key-we... https://thehistorybandits.com/2017/03...