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Marking the Miles to Key West
Destinations · August 1, 2002

The two-hour drive from Key Largo to Key West is often though of as a difficult, if not dull, journey - navigating around speed traps, traversing windy bridges and dodging dog-size deer.

But the trip down the Overseas Highway is a destination unto itself for many motorists, who savor each span and absorb the unfolding seascapes with the kind of devotion normally found in the saltwater fly-fishermen or underwater photographers who frequent these islands.

I didn't believe in the existence of the road aficionados until I moved back to the Florida Keys a year ago after a five-year absence. I hadn't noticed them the first time I lived here - well, actually I had, but I thought they were just slow drivers. Then, while researching a magazine story, I interviewed a motorcycle shop owner in Charles Town, W.Va., named Bill Ford, who told me that there was "a real cult aspect," to the ride down to the Southernmost City.

A cult aspect? Right here in my own back yard? Skeptical, I set out on my own to find out if this was true. I don't own a motorcycle, but my 1997 Honda Civic can make it down to Key West and back to my place in Key Largo on a single tank of gas, with enough left over for several trips to the grocery story. The only drawback of taking a car is that I can't experience the openness of the road, to feel the wind against my visor, to have no barriers between me and this supposedly legendary experience.

Sure enough, the strip of asphalt linking the Florida Keys is a spectacular, scenic - sometimes even a scary - ride. But you have to know where to look.

The stretch. If you're coming from Miami, your drive to Key West starts with an unexpected adrenaline rush - a harrowing trip down an 18-mile, mostly two-lane highway between Florida City and the islands called "The Stretch." Cars sometimes zoom past you at speeds topping 100 miles per hour. More often than not, though, it's a stop-and-go caravan of pickups hauling fishing boats, slow-moving campers and rental convertibles.

If you want to avoid the mess, take the more scenic Card Sound Road. It's a quieter, less traveled toll road that leads you over several attractive bridges. It's a better way to start a trip to Key West if you've got the time.

Highway One widens into four lanes at about Mile Marker 106 - everything is measured by mile markers in the islands - and you're met with the next hazard: a speed trap. They don't warn you about this in any of the tourism brochures, but they probably ought to.

It's here that you begin to see the slow-moving vehicles: late model Buicks, bearded men wearing lots of leather and riding Harleys, and yes, even aging Hondas. Why are they driving slowly? They're looking for that first span in Tavernier, where they drive across the teal waters of the Florida Bay, which on a cloudless and calm day here in the islands can have a hypnotic effect.

That's not hyperbole, unfortunately. I've seen cars veer off the road before, after, and even on a bridge. I can only imagine one of the passengers saying, "Honey, take a look at that water. What color do you think that is?" Seconds later, the SUV is in the other lane.

Head-on collisions aren't uncommon.

Motorists don't mix. Four lanes merge back into two at as you continue down the road, and it will remain that way for most of the rest of the trip to Key West. Squeezing all that traffic into two lanes makes for an interesting drive. There are two kinds of motorists here - the ones who are in a hurry, and the ones who aren't - and they don't play nice together. It's not unusual to see a rental car trying to get around a slower truck by leaving the road and passing from the right, churning dust and pebbles in every direction.

There are two noteworthy spans in the upper and middle Keys: the Long Key viaduct in Layton and the Seven Mile Bridge, just beyond Marathon. Both were built in the early 20th century by railroad magnate Henry Flagler - sometimes also called "Flagler's Folly" - to connect Miami to Key West. Flagler's critics thought he was crazy to build a railroad over the ocean, and when a hurricane wiped out most of the bridges in 1935, they were proven right. Some of the structures were rebuilt as roads, and in 1982 a new series of bridges were built alongside the old ones.

I only mention this because you can drive along the Overseas Highway parallel to the old bridges and see the remnants of the old East Coast Railway firsthand. It's a remarkable sight, whether it's the first time you're looking at it or the hundredth time, and I couldn't blame the car in front of me for coasting along the Long Key Viaduct just below the speed limit.

Long bridges in the Lower Keys. The longest and arguably the most scenic of the 42 spans on the Overseas Highway is the Seven Mile Bridge. On some days, you can't see the end of the road. The sky and the sea merge into a collage of blues and you feel as if you're driving along a two-lane road that might carry you across the Florida Straits to Cuba and beyond. On the right, there's an almost birds-eye view of Pigeon Key, which is accessible via the old bridge. The five-acre island is a restored pioneer village on National Register of Historic Places.

Another worthwhile stop - and in my estimation the most beautiful of the bridges - is the old Bahia Honda span at Mile Marker 36. It's just south of Bahia Honda State Park, and is interesting because after the railroad stopped running, engineers designed a road that ran on top of the bridge. The original track was too narrow to accommodate a paved road. The stretch of Highway One running alongside gives way to four lanes: one for sightseers, the other for everyone else.

Some drivers get bored at the end of the bridge and begin to accelerate, but that's a mistake. You're crossing into Big Pine Key, home of the rare Key deer, where speed limits are strictly enforced. These relatives of the Virginia white-tailed deer are about the size of a large dog, and they're extremely friendly. A little too friendly, maybe. Every year, despite laws to protect them, dozens of these gentle creatures are struck by cars. There are said to be fewer than 300 Key deer left on the planet - all of them on this island.

The only place I've ever seen a Key deer, by the way, is on Little Palm Island. The critters swim to the resort, where guests have been known to feed them. As times, I wonder if most of the Key deer haven't migrated to Little Palm Island, which would actually be a good thing, since there's no traffic there.

Key West brings you to the end of the drive at Mile Marker 0, which is just across from the county courthouse. Every other week, a tourist tries to steal the "MM 0" sign as a memento from the Keys (and not always successfully). It's a tradition among some of the more dedicated road connoisseurs to remove the sign, but couldn't bring myself to do it.

After all, I still needed to make it back to Key Largo.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator based in Key Largo, Fla.