Key Largo

Key Largo is where the mainland lets go. You cross Jewfish Creek, the strip malls thin out, the water opens up on both sides, and the highway becomes the Overseas Highway in the way people mean when they say it. It's about an hour from Miami — close enough for a day trip, which is exactly why it's the busiest dive destination in the chain.

The reef is the point

The living coral reef offshore is the only barrier reef in the continental United States and part of the third-largest reef system in the world. Protecting it was a genuinely radical idea in the 1950s, and it started here.

John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park opened to the public in May 1963 as the nation's first underwater park. It's named for a Miami newspaper editor who helped establish both this park and Everglades National Park. The Florida Park Service acquired the property in 1959, and President Eisenhower designated the adjacent Key Largo Coral Reef Preserve in 1960.

The protected area holds more than 600 species of fish and around 40 kinds of coral, and the wider preserve covers roughly 178 nautical square miles of reef, seagrass, and mangrove.

Christ of the Abyss

The most photographed underwater monument in the world sits in about 25 feet of water at Key Largo Dry Rocks. The bronze figure stands roughly eight and a half feet tall and weighs 4,000 pounds.

The story behind it is more interesting than most visitors realize. It's a casting of "Il Cristo Degli Abissi," sculpted by Italian artist Guido Galletti in 1954 and placed in the Mediterranean near Genoa. The original was set near where Dario Gonzatti, the first Italian to dive with scuba gear, died. Italian diving-equipment industrialist Egidio Cressi commissioned this casting and presented it to the Underwater Society of America, and after several years in storage and competing petitions from dive councils in Illinois, Michigan, and elsewhere, Key Largo was chosen as its home. A construction company from Islamorada lowered it into place on August 25, 1965, and it was dedicated the following June.

The top of the statue sits only about eight to ten feet below the surface, so snorkelers see it clearly — you do not need to be a certified diver to visit it, which surprises people.

The wrecks

Key Largo's other draw is steel. The USS Spiegel Grove, a 510-foot Navy landing ship dock, was sunk as an artificial reef in 2002 — famously settling wrong before Hurricane Dennis rolled her upright in 2005. She's a deep, advanced dive and one of the best-known wrecks in North America. The Duane, a Coast Guard cutter sunk in 1987, sits upright in about 120 feet and is the other classic.

Molasses Reef is the everyday favorite — shallow, bright, busy with fish, and holding remnants of a 19th-century shipwreck that connects directly to the wrecking era that built this place.

Above the water

Key Largo isn't a pretty town in the postcard sense — it's a working strip of dive shops, marinas, bait stores, and restaurants along 20-odd miles of highway. That's part of its charm and the reason it stays relatively affordable compared with Islamorada or Key West.

• African Queen (MM 100) — the actual steam launch from the 1951 Bogart and Hepburn film, restored and offering canal cruises. A genuine piece of film history sitting quietly behind a hotel.
• Dagny Johnson Key Largo Hammock Botanical State Park (MM 106) — one of the largest surviving tracts of West Indian tropical hardwood hammock in the country, with paved trails. Excellent birding, minimal crowds.
• Florida Keys Wild Bird Center (MM 93.6) — a rehabilitation center with boardwalks through the mangroves. Free, donation-supported, and a favorite with families.
• Sunsets on the bayside — Key Largo is wide enough that the Florida Bay side gives you real, unobstructed sunsets without the Key West crowds.

A note on the movie

The 1948 film Key Largo is set here, and it put the name into the American vocabulary — but most of it was shot in Hollywood. The island was named first: Cayo Largo, the long key, which is exactly what it is.

Practical notes

• Drive time: roughly an hour from Miami International, about 1 hour 45 from Fort Lauderdale.
• Diving conditions: summer generally brings the calmest seas and best visibility; winter cold fronts can shut down reef trips for days at a time.
• If you only have one day: a morning snorkel trip to Christ of the Abyss out of Pennekamp, lunch on the water, and the hammock trails or the Wild Bird Center in the afternoon.
• Booking: dive and snorkel boats fill early in season and on weekends when the Miami day-trip crowd comes down. Reserve ahead.