The island's greatest treasure was underwater all along. Off Key Largo runs the Florida Reef — the only living coral barrier reef in the continental United States and among the largest reef systems on Earth. In 1960, after years of alarm at coral looting, the state created John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park — the first undersea park in the United States, named for the Miami editor who fought for it. Since 1965 the park's emblem has been the bronze Christ of the Abyss, standing in twenty-five feet of water off Key Largo Dry Rocks with arms raised toward the surface light.
Away from the reef, Key Largo is a last refuge. The Dagny Johnson Key Largo Hammock Botanical State Park protects one of the largest tracts of West Indian tropical hardwood hammock in the continental United States — home of the Key Largo woodrat, found nowhere else on Earth — and the Florida Keys Wild Bird Center nurses pelicans and herons back to the sky. On the bay side, the island opens onto Florida Bay and the Everglades: Key Largo is the rare town with a national park to its west and America's first undersea park to its east.
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.
