Located about 21 miles from Key West, Cudjoe Key is probably best known for "Fat Albert", a military aerostat blimp tethered at the north end of the island since the Cuban Missile Crisis in the early sixties. This Key also has some interesting theories about it's name. One is simply that early settlers would come here to "cut joe", the joewood trees that were so prevalent. Another talks of an early Key Wester with a speech impediment who referred to his cousin Joe, then living on the island, as "Cud Joe". A third theory has a freed slave residing here taking the name Cudjoe for himself in reverence to a Jamaican rebel slave leader.

Cudjoe Key is mostly inhabited on the southern shores below US 1, while much of the rest of the island is wetlands and pinewoods, with many cabbage palms, a somewhat rare plant in the Keys. Bow Channel which separates Cudjoe and Sugarloaf Keys was named after a lady pioneer, Lily Lawrence Bow, who resided on the western shore from 1904 to 1906. The island has a marina-dive-bait shop, a convenience store/deli, a county sheriff station, three restaurants and an excellent veterinarian.