The block shown is between Duval Street on the left and Simonton on the right. The white sand road extending from Truman for about two blocks is Center Street. Truman Avenue is now almost strictly commercial, with a Denny's on the corner of Duval and a CVS Pharmacy by Simonton Street.

The saga of Truman Avenue, Old Town Key West's main east/west artery, is a long one that starts at the beginning of the Civil War. Florida seceded from the Union on January 10, 1861. Within a day, Captain James Brannan, the garrison's highest ranking officer had, without orders from Washington, taken Key West's Fort Taylor for the Federal government. Before January was through, the forts at St. Augustine, Fernandina and the Dry Tortugas plus the federal arsenal at Chattahoochee had also been seized­ but Key West's Civil War history is fodder for a future story. We're concerned now with Captain Brannan and his fifty men.

The men left from the Army Barracks on Anderson Street­ a now-vanished street between White Street and the water. The contingent­ all the soldiers based in Key West on that day­ crept under the cloak of darkness upon an established path that led to the causeway at the entrance of Fort Taylor yet skirted the city proper. The only "settled" portion of Key West they passed was the keeper's quarters at the Lighthouse. Although history doesn't tell us what the Lighthouse folk thought of Brannan and his men's nighttime maneuvers, we do know that Keeper Barbara Mabrity lost her job due to her perceived Confederate sympathies.

After their successful claiming of the fort, the path was improved and enlarged­ a route that avoided the center of a town full of Confederate sympathizers was a good thing when you were the enemy. The official name for the street was Brannan, although the path remained so pitted and full of stones that locals called it Rocky Road. The late 1860's brought the arrival of the Sisters of the Holy Name of Jesus and Mary to Key West and their establishment of a school across from the Lighthouse. By the 1870's, the road was being called Military Road and, in 1875, construction began for the Convent and school near the road's junction with Windsor Lane.

At the turn of the next century the street was called Division Street. Finally in 1948 it was named after Key West's favorite president, Harry S. Truman. A steady visitor throughout his presidency and into his later life, Truman truly loved the Southernmost City. The March issue of Key West History magazine will be a salute to all things Truman in Key West.