What's with Key Largo? Key Largo is the gateway of the Florida Keys — first island down the Overseas Highway, self-styled Diving Capital of the World, and home of America's first undersea park. It runs thirty-three green-water miles toward Key West, took its name from Spanish charts and its fame from a 1948 Bogart film — and has been trading happily on both ever since.
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.
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.
