Editor’s note: This column was originally published on Jan. 27, 2005.

KEY WEST, Fla. — Key West is probably the only place in America where the sidewalks are steam-cleaned, the taxis are hot pink and a single-wide mobile home costs $395,000.

A friend and I came here for a wedding, but it was the prices that moved us to tears. When I got the total for some T-shirts purchased as gifts, my knees buckled. Compared with Key West, Sun Valley is Walmart.

The two do have something in common, however. Both are known for their homes of writer Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway’s Ketchum house is in the news with a proposal to open it to public tours. Neighbors object, arguing that crowds and noise would harm their upscale neighborhood.

To see how much harm tours actually do, I visited Hemingway’s Key West house. It’s been open to public tours for 40 years.

The Key West house is in an upscale neighborhood, too. It’s a quiet residential area, green and shady with tropical trees that were planted before Idaho was a state. The two-story, Spanish Colonial house was built in 1851 . Hemingway’s second wife’s uncle bought it as a gift for her and her literary husband in 1931 for $8,000. That included $3,000 in back taxes. The house had been closed for years because no one in Key West could afford it. In those days, Key West was a regular place.

The house is home to 61 cats, all descended from Hemingway’s. Many have literary names — Gertrude Stein, Zane Grey, Mark Twain ... One is named Boise. Boise, according to tour guide Joe Buggy, is named for one of Oscar Wilde’s lovers.

Hemingway lived in the Key West House from 1931 to 1940 and wrote some of his best-known novels and short stories there. The house is a short walk from Key West’s tallest structure, a lighthouse. One of the reasons the house was chosen, tour guide John Brooks said, was that Hemingway could use the lighthouse to find his way home when he was drunk.

Today, the neighborhood is more sedate. I spent parts of two afternoons at the house and walked through the neighborhood at other times, and there was never a time when it was anything but sedate. Crowds came and went quietly, almost reverently. People took pictures, asked questions, conversed in subdued voices. I’ve been in churches that were louder.

A local jeweler bought the house in 1961 and converted it to a museum in 1964. Since then, Key West has become a different place.

“The old Key West Hemingway knew died in about 1975,” Brooks said. “It really started to boom in the ’80s. The cruise ships started coming in the ’90s. We get four or five cruise ships a day now. That’s meant more tourists at the house, but that hasn’t really been a problem.”

At the current average of 600 tourists a day, admission fees ($11 per person) pay for the staff and upkeep. They also provide a nice income for the house’s owners, who use some of the money to support local schools, businesses, the arts, charities and civic events.

Here in Idaho, the non-profit Idaho Hemingway House Foundation would like to open the Ketchum house to tours for no more than 45 people a day. That’s less than 8 percent of the number who tour the Key West House.

“The Ketchum house is the only one that isn’t open,” Brooks said. “There are about 25 places where Hemingway lived or spent time, and all of them but the Ketchum house have become some sort of shrine or museum.”

I told him about the Ketchum residents who were worried about their quiet neighborhood.

“This is a quiet neighborhood, too,” he said. “Look around. All you have is a line. How much of a problem is that?”

Jacque Sands, the home’s on-site manager, added that “crowds and noise have never been a problem. We have weddings at night, but the bands shut down by 10:30 to comply with local ordinances. And in the daytime, noise isn’t even a factor. There has never been a single incident that has caused any trouble or inconvenience.”

In other words, the Ketchum neighbors have little to fear. And whether they like it or not, the Ketchum house is part of something bigger than they are. If that means putting up with a few visitors and a little extra dust on the Hummer, so be it.

If you’ve got a favorite column Tim wrote that you’d like to see in print again, send headline or key words to Niki Forbing-Orr at nforbing-orr@idahostatesman.com.