You can drive from one end of the Keys to the other in about two hours, but any good Florida Keys tour will take you a little longer than that. After all, why drive through the Keys if you’re not going to stop at all the interesting destinations along the way? If you’d like to check out our tour, just download the Action Tour Guide app on Android or iOS devices.

In the old days, traveling from the mainland out to the Keys used to take quite a bit more time. For a long time, the only way to get from key to key was to take a ferry, which was a little too pricey and time-consuming for most people. Henry Flagler, a midwest-based industrialist, and oilman, first put together a plan to connect the Keys, which he accomplished around the turn of the 20th century when he completed the Overseas Railroad. Thanks to the work of Flagler and his workers, traveling was now much easier.

It became easier still some thirty-odd years later when the Labor Day hurricane took out big portions of the railroad. Lacking the funds to repair them, the railroad company sold the right of way to the state of Florida, which used it to replace the rails with the Overseas Highway, allowing individual drivers to finally travel out into the Keys without needing a train ticket. Today, the Overseas Highway runs all the way from Key Largo out to Key West, the southernmost point in the continental United States.

The trip from Key Largo to Key West can be completed in about two hours, but our tour will take closer to three, and even more if you decide to stop anywhere along the way.

Check out our very own Florida Keys Self-Guided Driving Tour. With Action+, Travel all year and take our self-guided tours with you wherever you go!