9. The Keys

The Florida Keys: that arc of islands that fall like drops from the fin of Florida.

For a hundred thousand years the whole area between where the keys are now and the rest of Florida was a shallow coral sea. During the ice age (20,000 years ago), when the sea level dropped some 300 feet, the exposed limestone plateau was invaded by trees and beasts. The melting glaciers (15,000 years ago) recreated the vast tray of shallow water except for the ridges on the windward side that became the row of keys. (This flooding, incidentally, trapped a group of white tailed deer which evolved into a separate species: cute toy deer two feet high).


When you see them close up, the islands are flat and soggy, covered in a mangy fur of mangroves, and set in such shallow water that they are largely inaccessible. This is probably a good thing. These mangroves are nurseries of lobsters and fish, kindergartens of conch and crabs and the birthplace of birds.


In more recent times, Key West, at the edge of the deep water, became a port. In 1905, an oil baron called Flagler, who was into big projects and had more money than he could use (he was 75), decided to build a rail line from Miami to Key West. Seven years, seven hundred lives, and hundreds of bridges (one seven miles long) later he rode his train into Key West. In 1935 a hurricane ripped up half the track. Flagler’s successors (he was dead by then) did not have the heart to rebuild.

From the new four lane highway that has turned the Keys into a one hundred mile strip mall, you can still see sections of Flagler’s rail bridges, now 100 years old, exposed like the vertebrae of some long extinct reptile