The farming century is the island's least-remembered chapter. Through the late 1800s and early 1900s, Key Largo grew pineapples and key limes for northern markets, and mule wagons hauled the crop to packing houses by the landings. The little settlement at the island's heart went by Rock Harbor — a name that would last until Hollywood intervened. Hurricanes, competition, and blight wound the plantations down, but the key lime never left the Keys; it just moved from the groves into the pie.
The park made the island the Diving Capital of the World. Dive shops line the highway; glass-bottom boats, snorkeling tours, and charters work Molasses Reef and the wrecks; and at Jules' Undersea Lodge, guests scuba down to the world's first underwater hotel and sleep beneath the surface. Coral nurseries now work to restore what heat and time have stressed — the island that once mined its reef now replants it.
Why People Visit Key Largo Florida
Key Largo is the Diving Capital of the World and the first of the Keys: the gateway island where the Overseas Highway begins, home of the first undersea park in the United States, the Christ of the Abyss beneath the reef, and the only living coral barrier reef in the continental U.S. — with the Everglades across the bay and Key West waiting down the road.
