Henry Flagler's Overseas Railroad — the "railroad that went to sea" — crossed Key Largo on its way down the chain, and the first train ran through to Key West in 1912. For two decades the island sat on one of the boldest rail lines ever built in America, until the Labor Day hurricane of 1935 — the strongest ever to strike the United States — tore out the line below. The railroad never ran again; the Overseas Highway opened along its path in 1938, and U.S. 1 has carried the Keys' traffic ever since.
Hurricanes remain the island's oldest story — Donna in 1960 ran the Keys end to end, and storms before and since have each taken their toll — but Key Largo's pattern has always been the same: rebuild, replant, reopen. The neon motels and drive-ins of the mid-century boom gave way to dive resorts and marinas, and the island settled into what it is now: the Keys' front door, tourist-bright on the highway and wild a hundred yards off 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.
