Florida Keys 1996: A History and Guide - Joy Williams - Paperback

INTRODUCTION The Florida Keys do not run due south. They drift southwest, Route 1 running more east-west than north-south. The Gulf side is actually Florida Bay, the upper reaches of which belong to the Everglades. The Bay side is called the "backcountry" or "outback." The Atlantic side is actually the Straits of Florida, where wide Hawk Channel runs out from shore to the reef, which stretches the length of the Keys. Beyond the reef is the Gulf Stream--"out front"-that great oceanic river whose demarcation is clearly seen, the water being a profound and fabulous blue. Beyond the Gulf Stream lies, then, the ocean. The Keys run from Biscayne Bay to the Dry Tortugas, a distance of some 180 miles. No road runs to the keys north of Key Largo-Sands, Elliott, and Old Rhodes-and the Tortugas are 70 watery, wild miles from Key West. The distance accessible by car is some 106 miles-from Key Largo to Key West. That road, originally built in the 1930s, replaced Henry Flagler's Florida East Coast Extension railroad line, an amazing piece of engineering which had linked the Keys since 1912 and which was destroyed by a hurricane in 1935. The mile markers (MM #-) referred to in this guide-green signs with white numerals, posted on the right-hand shoulder-were first placed along the Keys by the railroad. On a map the Keys look fairly improbable-and Route 1, the line that drops down their sprinkled length, improbable too. The possibilities are vast, but the road itself is simple, which explains why some travelers begin at Key Largo, hang on to the steering wheel, and don't stop until Key West, heeding the billboards' urging, GO ALL THE WAY, with all its attendant, randy implications of reckless fulfillment. Other travelers arrive in the Keys, love them, stick close to Islamorada, and wouldn't dream of going all the way, considering Key West weird if not bizarre, as though that singular and raffish place were at the bottom of an ever-darkening well. But of course the Keys don't really go from light to dark. The Keys sparkle downward, warm and bright, full of light and air and a bit of intrigue. The Keys are relaxed, a little reckless. The Keys are water and sky, horizon, daybreak, spectacular sunsets, the cup of night. The least interesting thing about them is the road, but the road, as is its nature, allows entrance. The road is the beginning. There are some automobile guides, such as the old Sanborn Guides to Mexico, that are wonderfully jittery backseat companions, not pointing out cathedrals and markets (because the route in question is manifestly lacking in cathedrals and markets) but taking great pains to point out everything else. A child selling an iguana is here; half a kilometer down the road you will pass a most peculiarly shaped boulder; a bit beyond that there was once a Pemex station, though unfortunately a Pemex station is no longer there, only a tire dump; two kilometers away the road curves.... And so on. The Keys once lent themselves to this sort of innocent treatment, and in a way they still do. There is the road, and there are the dutiful descending markers accompanying your every mile, suggesting that a trip is little more than coloring your own experience between provided lines. At MM #- there is an egret; at MM #- there's a pretty view between two violet jacaranda trees; at MM #-, if you can wait that long, is a bar where the bartender wears live snakes wrapped around her neck and wrists-her "pretties," she calls them.... And so on. Time passes, of course. The snake lady is run over one night as she is crossing the road. Someone builds his dream house in front of the pretty view, cutting down the jacaranda trees in the process. But the Keys, though no longer the empty, silent stretches they once were, still markedly lack (you might as well be told) historical and cultural monuments. And the osprey still builds his nest larger eaWilliams, Joy is the author of 'Florida Keys 1996: A History and Guide - Joy Williams - Paperback' with ISBN 9780679759348 and ISBN 0679759344.