The name came long before the fame. Spanish sailors called the island Cayo Largo — "long key" — and the name appears on charts as far back as a 1639 Dutch map. Calusa and Tequesta peoples knew these islands for centuries before that, fishing the flats and moving between the mangrove shores; later came wreckers, salvaging cargo off the reef that would one day make the island famous for gentler reasons.
Today Key Largo is the first of the Keys in every sense — first island down the highway, first undersea park in America, first name travelers learn on the way to Key West. Its story runs from Cayo Largo on a Dutch chart through pineapple wagons, a drowned railroad, and a Hollywood rename to the Diving Capital of the World. Wear a little of the island that gave its name to a film and took it back.
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.
