The end of the road in Key West

This is the end of the line.

The Southernmost Point of the Southernmost City in the continental United States lies in Key West, where Whitehead and South Streets intersect. Tourists routinely line up to have their pictures taken next to signs that say so. Except that it isn't. Not exactly.

The real southernmost point is on private Ballast Key, a few miles southwest. And back on Key West, a section of beach at Fort Zachary Taylor State Park and a point in the part of Truman Annex still owned by the U.S. Navy are farther south than the aforementioned marker.

Furthermore, Cuba is 94 miles away, not 90 miles, as the famous painted marker says.

A further nitpick? This isn't Mile Zero of U.S. 1, as many people think. The 2,209-mile stretch of road leading sinuously south from Fort Kent, Maine, ends (or begins, depending on your point of view) a few blocks west on Whitehead Street.

But if you're a stickler for facts, maybe Key West isn't your kind of town.

People here prefer an entertaining yarn, as their reverence for former storytellers-in-residence attests: Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, even Jimmy Buffett.

Defying logic, which is a frequent pastime in Key West, everyone, even the tourist agencies, blithely calls the cone-shaped structure a "concrete buoy."

But buoys float. Concrete? Hardly ever.

Who would expect this place to bring tears to your eyes?

To the right of the marker, a plaque reminds visitors of the Cuban rafters who drowned out there beyond the sea wall in the milky blue-green waters of the Florida Straits.

From here, you can't see Cuba on even the clearest day. But on a steamy September morning, Pedro Nunez can feel it.

"Alli," he says. "There. It's over there."

His wife, mother-in-law and a visiting cousin from Cuba crowd around him, staring quietly south.

At this street corner, they're closer to Cuba than to their home in Miami.