Then came the strangest turn in the island's story: it renamed itself after a movie. A 1948 film noir borrowed the island's name for a storm-lashed hotel drama, and the picture became a classic. On June 1, 1952, the Rock Harbor post office made it official — the town would be Key Largo, trading on a fame the island had technically lent the film in the first place. The loop closed again in 1982, when the actual African Queen — the 1912 steam launch from the 1951 river epic, now on the National Register — took up residence in a Key Largo canal, where she still runs visitors today.
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.
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.
