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.
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.
