 The paper's ultimate aim, was "the advancement of the interests of Key West and Monroe County".A few years later, local newspaperman T.J. Appleyard bought the "Key West Herald", a weekly organized by a number of citizens five years previously, and then swallowed Thompson's "Key to the Gulf", around 1900.He combined those two papers into the "Inter-Ocean", described during its five-year run as a "high-class fearless daily".