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The Overseas Highway
No one who has driven highway 1 through the Keys will fail to be amazed at
this stretch of 126 miles of blacktop with its 42 bridges. Beginning in 1923,
with various bond issues to build a motorway to parallel the railroad, both Dade
and Monroe counties began their sections of the highway.
Originally, the road to the mainland was relegated to narrow wooden bridges,
with a ferry ride across the "deep water gap" between the no-name Key and lower
Matecumbe. Then, the Overseas Highway Bridge Corporation was formed to construct
13.2 miles of bridges and 13.6 miles of causeway fill. But due to financial
concerns during the depression, the project dragged on. However, due to the
devastating hurricane of 1935 which ripped up 16 miles of the Florida East Coast
Railroad, the Public Works Administration of Washington supported funding of the
road, rather then rebuild the railroad link to the mainland. The water gap
bridges of the railroad were converted to highway bridges.
Around the start of world war 2, the government converted the entire highway
using the concrete bridges of the railroad, eliminating the wooden bridges. The
program was completed in 1944, and was dedicated by then governor Spessard
Holland.
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