Key West loves to identify itself as the southernmost everything. Naturally there’s a Southernmost Point Buoy (at least, a southernmost point that’s publicly accessible). If you look at a map you can see that the corner of Whitehead and South streets clearly isn’t the southernmost point on the island, but rather the southernmost point outside of a secured naval facility.

Since at least the 1950s, that site has been a tourist attraction, with a sign and a local family selling Conch shells. Despite its size, the sign was repeatedly stolen, so in the early 1980s the city put up a painted concrete buoy.

The buoy became a tourist attraction; now, in the selfie/Instagram age, it’s popularity has really taken off. It’s common to see lines of people waiting in subtropical heat to take photos with the marker. And some crazy things happen here. There was the time a row of sorority sisters dropped their pants and posed facing the marker at 3 a.m. (The girls became a local media sensation, thanks to the webcam that captured the moment.) And then there was the group of Cuban emigres who crossed the Florida Straits and tied up there in the middle of the night (when the “wet-foot, dry-foot” policy was still in effect).

The buoy has never been dislodged by a hurricane, but its paint job was damaged by Hurricane Irma. Its restoration and repainting by Danny Acosta, the same artist who painted it in 1983, was an occasion of celebration and a sign of return to normality after the storm.