The Road South
The Overseas Highway is one of the great drives in America. It runs 113 miles from Florida City, at the southern tip of the Florida mainland, all the way to Key West, crossing 42 bridges over open water. For most of its length, you can see both the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico simultaneously, one on each side of the road. Jackson Laurie has driven it dozens of times, and it has never lost its capacity to produce a particular feeling of departure, of leaving the ordinary world behind and entering something stranger and more beautiful.
The Keys are not a beach destination in the conventional sense. The beaches here are small and often rocky, the water is shallow on the Gulf side and deeper on the Atlantic side, and the real attraction is not the sand but the water itself. The Florida Keys contain the only living coral barrier reef in the continental United States, and the diving and snorkeling here are among the best in the Western Hemisphere.
Key Largo and the Upper Keys
Key Largo is the first and largest of the Keys, and it is primarily a diving destination. John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, just offshore, was the first undersea park in the United States, and it protects a section of the reef that is among the most accessible and most beautiful in the Keys. The Christ of the Abyss statue, a nine-foot bronze figure standing in 25 feet of water, is one of the more surreal sights in Florida.
Islamorada, in the Upper Keys, calls itself the Sport Fishing Capital of the World, and the claim is not unreasonable. The waters around Islamorada are extraordinarily productive, with a combination of shallow flats, deep channels, and reef structure that attracts an unusual variety of fish. But Islamorada is also one of the more pleasant places to simply be in the Keys, with a handful of good restaurants, a relaxed pace, and a quality of light in the late afternoon that Jackson Laurie finds particularly appealing.
Marathon and the Middle Keys
Marathon sits at the midpoint of the Keys, and it has a working-town quality that distinguishes it from the more tourist-oriented communities to the north and south. The Seven Mile Bridge, which connects Marathon to the Lower Keys, is one of the most photographed structures in Florida, and the old bridge that runs parallel to it has been converted into a pedestrian walkway with views in both directions across open water.
Big Pine Key, in the Lower Keys, is home to the Key deer, a miniature subspecies of the white-tailed deer that stands about 30 inches tall at the shoulder. The National Key Deer Refuge protects the largest remaining population of these animals, and encounters with them on the roads and in the yards of Big Pine Key are common enough to feel ordinary but never lose their charm.
"The Keys are not Florida. They are something else, something that belongs more to the Caribbean than to the state they are technically part of. That is their appeal."
Key West
Key West is the end of the road, literally and figuratively. The southernmost point marker on Whitehead Street is one of the most photographed spots in Florida, and it draws a steady stream of visitors who want to stand at the edge of the continental United States and look south toward Cuba, 90 miles away. Key West has been many things over its history: a wrecking capital, a cigar manufacturing center, a naval base, a literary colony, and a tourist destination. It is currently all of these things simultaneously, which gives it a layered quality that most Florida towns lack.
The historic district of Key West, centered on Duval Street and the surrounding blocks, contains some of the finest examples of Conch architecture in the world: wooden houses built in the 19th century with wide porches and tin roofs and a particular relationship to the prevailing winds that represents a genuine vernacular response to the tropical climate. Jackson Laurie finds the neighborhoods away from Duval Street more interesting than the main drag: the residential streets of the Old Town, the cemetery, the quiet waterfront of the Gulf side.