What's so great about the Key West Conch Train?

The World Famous Conch Tour Train in Key West is great for several reasons. It allows free parking at the Key West Welcome Center in an eight-square-mile city where most parking is metered and scarce. The drivers, who are tour guides, inform about Key West’s history, with interesting statistics and humor. Best of all, the guides easily point out all of Key West’s attractions, and allow visitors to hop on and off throughout the day at designated stops. If a visitor is going to spend the day in Key West, it’s a no-brainer way to see the town and have fun, without the worries of parking, getting lost or walking miles and miles.

The Conch Tour Train has been in business for 52 years. It’s perfected its mission and hosts more than five million guests a year.

Among the banter from the guides are these statistics: Key West has 225 restaurants and 51 art galleries. While U.S. Highway 1 starts in Key West at mile marker zero, the highway ends 2,000 miles away in Fort Kent, Maine. The Gato House was moved using two mules and took two weeks. Solares Hill occupies the island’s highest point at 18 feet above sea level.

All sorts of colorful characters and history are described: Ernest Hemingway, Harry Truman, Wyland and John Audubon as well as pirates, wreckers, cigar makers, turtle hunters and spongers.

Henry Flagler, who connected 29 islands to form the first thoroughfare connecting the Florida Keys in January 1912, is memorialized in the Flagler Station Historeum Museum, a free attraction and a conch train stop near Key West’s port.

For more information, visit www.conchtourtrain.com or call 305-294-5161.

Another option is City View Key West Trolley Tours with tickets priced $19 per adult, $9 per child. Visit www.keywesttrolleytours.com or call 305-294-0644 for more information.

Additional information on a Florida Keys visit may be found at www.fla-keys.com.