Driving alongside the Abroad Freeway by the Florida Keys, it’s straightforward to have your sense of route confused. When getting into Key Largo and heading down the island chain like birds for the winter, it looks like try to be touring south. Conversely, leaving the island chain and driving again to the mainland, the pure inclination is to assume you might be transferring north.
A compass will point out that you’re mistaken. The island chain doesn’t fall away from the peninsula in a straight line however an extended, sweeping curve. Key Largo, on the high of the freeway, roughly aligns with Miami and the east coast. On the different finish of the freeway, Key West is positioned west of Fort Myers, a metropolis that borders Florida’s different coast.
The 2, Key West and Fort Myers, share an attention-grabbing connection. As soon as upon a time, each had been a part of a considerably bigger Monroe County. When it was established in 1823, the county stretched from the county seat at Key West north to Lake Okeechobee and west to Port Charlotte — about 30 miles north of Fort Myers. In 1885, when Fort Myers, inhabitants 349, included, it grew to become the second metropolis in Monroe County to take action. Key West, the primary, did it in 1828.
Getting again to the freeway and the dialogue concerning the route it travels, north and south or east and west, it’s the latter. For example, when the freeway rolls away from Lengthy Key within the route of Key West, it leaves the island’s west finish. It does a few different issues, too, one in every of which is extra concrete than the opposite. The considerably summary factor that happens when driving away from Lengthy Secret’s that you simply enter a comparatively undefined space the place the Higher Keys finish and the Center Keys start.
The conduit used to hyperlink the 2 geographical areas is the Lengthy Key Bridge, of which there are two. There may be the bridge accommodating the vehicles driving forwards and backwards throughout it in the present day and the one which supported the railroad tracks that delivered Henry Flagler’s prepare forwards and backwards between Key West and the mainland. Each supply spectacular, unobstructed views. Each variations of the bridge are the second longest of the bridges connecting the island chain to the mainland.
The previous railroad bridge is definitely referred to as the Lengthy Key Viaduct. Merriam-Webster defines a viaduct as “an extended elevated roadway often consisting of a collection of quick spans supported on arches, piers or columns.” Viaducts had been used to construct 26 railroad bridges between Decrease Matecumbe Key and Key West.
The two.7-mile-long Lengthy Key Viaduct was constructed with 215 50-foot arches. Probably the most tough of all of the bridges to make, the engineering marvel was Henry Flagler’s favourite. Additionally, the Lengthy Key Viaduct’s likeness was used to symbolize the Florida East Coast Railway on its brand for the Key West Extension. It is usually used within the brand of the Monroe County Library System.
The viaduct, accomplished in 1913, served the wants of the railroad till the arrival of the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane on September 2. Whereas the hurricane destroyed 40 miles of railroad tracks, most of the bridges supporting them withstood the large impacts of the storm. When the second model of the Abroad Freeway opened to site visitors in 1938, most of the railroad bridges had been widened to accommodate vehicles and vehicles, together with the Lengthy Key Viaduct.
For 44 years, Flagler’s favourite bridge supported vehicle site visitors. In 1982, the previous railroad viaduct was retired and changed by the bridge we drive alongside in the present day. The previous Lengthy Key Viaduct continues to be open to site visitors as a part of the Florida Keys Abroad Heritage Path — foot and bicycle site visitors. Within the morning, midday and night time, fishermen might be seen on the viaduct, standing guard over their poles and ready for that curious twitch the road does when a fish reveals curiosity within the tasty morsel on the different finish.
The Florida Keys Abroad Heritage Path is a paved path overlaying greater than 90 miles that parallels the Abroad Freeway between Key Largo and Key West. Most of the previous railroad bridges have been included into the path. Not all of them – after greater than 100 years, a few of the previous bridges are barely protected for the pelicans, cormorants and seagulls that collect on them.
Each variations of the Lengthy Key Bridge finish at Conch Key, the start of the Center Keys. There are two Conch Keys, Conch Key and Little Conch Key. Conch Key, the place the bridge ends, is quite a bit larger now than it was when Henry Flagler’s prepare used to roar up and down the tracks. The “actual” Conch Secret’s positioned on the Gulf aspect of the freeway. The opposite a part of the island, discovered on the Atlantic aspect of the freeway, didn’t come into existence till the late Nineteen Fifties. The dredge and fill mission was accomplished by 1959.
Within the meantime, there are extra islands, bridges, and fill to discover on the Nice Florida Keys Street Journey.
In 2025, I’ll be exploring the Abroad Freeway, its historical past, sights, and factors I discover attention-grabbing.