Key Largo
Start with Key Largo to understand the established center, nearby services and everyday rhythm within Monroe County.
Complete Florida county guide
Monroe
County
The Florida Keys deliver one-of-a-kind island living, marine recreation and tourism along a long, narrow chain with unique housing, insurance and transportation realities.
Tropical FloridaSouth Florida & the Keys
REGIONSouth Florida & the Keys
COMMUNITIES TO START WITHKey Largo · Islamorada · Marathon · Key West
LIFESTYLE SIGNALSIsland life · Marine · Tourism
Start with daily life
What Monroe County feels like before you choose a neighborhood.
The Florida Keys deliver one-of-a-kind island living, marine recreation and tourism along a long, narrow chain with unique housing, insurance and transportation realities.
Use this guide as a first-pass planning tool. On a scouting trip, compare actual commute routes, insurance requirements, medical access, school or training options and the places you would use in an ordinary week—not only the best-known attraction.
The numbers that matter if you are moving
- Population
- 81,860Census estimate
- At the last full count
- 82,8742020 Census
- Median age
- 49.2
- Aged 65 and over
- 24.7%
- Under 18
- 15.7%
- Median household income
- $87,738
- Median home value
- $780,600what owners estimate
- Homeownership
- 65.8%
- People per household
- 2.33
- Average commute
- 19.5 minutes
U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey, published January 2026, read September 19, 2026. Survey figures are estimates; median home value is what owners estimate their home is worth, not a sale price.
COUNTY LIFESTYLE THEMES
Island lifeMarineTourism
Relocation decision desk
Six checks before you choose a county.
Property cost, flood and wind, schools, healthcare, daily travel and storm readiness.
How to research a Florida county →Communities to compare
Begin with the county’s major places.
These are starting points, not a ranking. Add nearby towns and neighborhoods as you learn your daily route and housing priorities.
Islamorada
Use Islamorada to compare housing patterns, main-road access and the shopping or medical stops used during a normal week.
Marathon
Walk or drive through Marathon at different times of day to judge traffic, neighborhood character and access to outdoor space.
Key West
Compare Key West with the county’s other major places for commute direction, home choices and the pace you want in Monroe County.
Hospitals in Monroe County
Four hospitals with an emergency room.
From the state's own hospital list. Each card opens the state's record for that hospital: its address, phone, services and inspection reports.
Key West
Lower Keys Medical Center
118 licensed beds
The state's record ↗Key WestDePoo Hospital
49 licensed beds
The state's record ↗TavernierMariners Hospital
25 licensed beds
The state's record ↗MarathonFishermen's Community Hospital
8 licensed beds
The state's record ↗How do I compare hospitals in Florida? →How do I find a doctor who takes Medicare? →Search the state's hospital list ↗
Source: Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, FloridaHealthFinder, Locate a Facility (hospitals), read September 25, 2026.
Evergreen county experiences
20 places that reveal the county.
Use enduring natural, historic and cultural places to understand the area beyond a real-estate showing.
Dry Tortugas National Park
Seven small keys break the surface: Loggerhead at sixty-four acres, Garden Key at forty-two, Bush Key at thirty, and Long, Hospital, Middle and East Keys. Some have vanished and come back with storms. Juan Ponce de Leon came by in 1513, took sea turtles here and called them Las Tortugas; the Dry was added later because there is no fresh water on any of them.
John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park
It is named for John D. Pennekamp, a Miami newspaper editor who campaigned for the Everglades and then for this reef when it was being stripped for the curio trade. With the adjoining Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary it covers about a hundred and seventy-eight nautical square miles, running some twenty-five miles along the keys and three miles out into the Atlantic.
Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum
Asa Tift, a marine salvage merchant, built it out of local limestone, and Hemingway and his second wife Pauline bought it in 1931. He did a great deal of his work here. The house is furnished as it was lived in rather than restaged, with the Pilar and photographs of his fishing among the displays in the living room.
Fort Zachary Taylor Historic State Park
The fort was part of the coastal defenses built after the War of 1812 and took the name of President Zachary Taylor in November 1850, a few months after he died in office. In January 1861 Union Captain John Milton Brannan marched his men in and held it, which kept Key West in Union hands for the whole of the Civil War and made the blockade of the Gulf possible from here.
Key West Butterfly & Nature Conservatory
Fifty to sixty species of butterfly from around the world fly loose inside it, among flowering plants, small waterfalls and trees set up to give them what they need at each stage of life. The birds share the space: American flamingos walk the paths, and red-factor canaries, zebra finches, cordon-bleu finches and Chinese painted quail fly through.
Harry S. Truman Little White House
Scott, McDermott and Higgs designed it and it went up in 1890 as the first officers' quarters at the naval station, a wooden duplex shared by the base commandant and the paymaster, made into a single house in 1911. Truman came eleven times between 1946 and 1953 and worked from here rather than resting; the desk with the sign reading that the buck stops here is on show.
Mel Fisher Maritime Museum
Mel Fisher searched for the Nuestra Senora de Atocha, a Spanish galleon lost in a hurricane in 1622, for sixteen years before his divers found the main pile on July 20, 1985. Material from the Atocha and from her sister ship the Santa Margarita is here, along with finds from the Santa Clara of 1564 and from the Guerrero and the Nimble.
Key West Lighthouse & Keeper's Quarters
The first light on this island was destroyed by the hurricane of 1846 and this tower replaced it two years later. What made it unusual was its keeper: a woman held the post in the nineteenth century, which was close to unheard of in the service.
Florida Keys Eco-Discovery Center
It opened in 2007 and was rebuilt with over a million dollars of local and federal money into six thousand square feet of exhibits a person can walk through without getting wet. A living red mangrove with its arching roots stands inside, with animal calls to listen to and surfaces to touch; behind images of the seafloor, retractable cylinders open to show what lives in the seagrass.
Dolphin Research Center
The site has been working with dolphins since 1958, when the fisherman Milton Santini ran Santini's Porpoise School here; one of his dolphins, Mitzi, played the title role in the film Flipper and in its sequel of 1964. It was Flipper's Sea School through the 1970s and then the Institute for Delphinid Research under the anti-whaling campaigner Jean Paul Fortom-Gouin before taking its present form.
Bahia Honda State Park
Sandspur, Loggerhead and Calusa are the three beaches, and the sand here is real sand rather than the thin cover most of the Keys have, because of the way the current works through Bahia Honda Channel. The old Bahia Honda Bridge, built for Henry Flagler's Overseas Railroad in the early 1900s and abandoned after the 1935 hurricane, stands beside the park; a walking trail leads onto a surviving section and the view down over the water from it is the picture people take here.
Crane Point Museum & Nature Center
A nonprofit was formed in 1976 to save this land, and what it saved is a block of tropical hardwood forest that has never been cleared, sitting between the highway and the water in the busiest part of the middle Keys. Two houses stand in it.
The Turtle Hospital
Richie Moretti bought the Hidden Harbor Motel in 1981 and turned its saltwater pool into an aquarium. Children kept asking to see a turtle, and the state would not let him keep endangered sea turtles unless he ran a rehabilitation program, so in 1986 he started one.
Theater of the Sea
The P. F. McKenney family started it and the family still runs it, which makes it one of the oldest marine mammal parks in the world.
Key West National Wildlife Refuge
Theodore Roosevelt established it in 1908 to stop the killing of birds for the hat trade, the first refuge in the Florida Keys and one of the earliest in the country. The land is twenty-six islands in the Mule Keys and the Marquesas Keys, all unpopulated and all designated wilderness.
Mallory Square
Commodore David Porter set up an anti-piracy squadron on this ground in 1823. When the pirates were gone the square became the working waterfront: buildings here stored and auctioned the cargo pulled off ships wrecked on the reef, which was the richest business on the island for decades, and the sponge trade and the cigar trade followed.
Southernmost Point
It is made from a concrete sewer junction, which is worth knowing before lining up for a photograph, and the line can be long. The wording says ninety miles to Cuba. The nearest point of Cuba is about ninety-four statute miles away; ninety nautical miles, which is a hundred and four statute miles, is roughly the distance to Havana, so the figure is defensible as a round number rather than a measurement.
Duval Street
It is named for William Pope Duval, the first territorial governor of Florida, and the American Planning Association named it a Great Street in 2012. The two ends are not alike. The northern end, near Mallory Square, handles the cruise ship trade with shops, bars and restaurants, and includes Sloppy Joe's and Margaritaville.
Key West Aquarium
It was the first open-air aquarium in the United States. Doctor Robert Van Deusen, who ran the Fairmount Park Aquarium in Philadelphia, designed it, and the roof was added later. Admission at the opening was fifteen cents for an adult and five for a child, at a time when the federal government was deliberately turning a bankrupt Key West into a tourist town.
National Key Deer Refuge
The Key deer is a subspecies of white-tailed deer found nowhere else, about the size of a large dog. By the 1950s hunting and road deaths had brought it down to somewhere between twenty-five and fifty animals; counts in recent years put the herd between eight hundred and a thousand.
Beaches in Monroe County
Every beach, one clear card.
14BEACH DESTINATIONS
Each card gives the beach, its visit category and its next steps: the practical visit guide, the official site where the beach has one, and directions. Always verify current parking, fees, water quality, lifeguard coverage and posted rules before leaving.
STANDARD PUBLIC BEACH
Not identified here as clothing-optional. This category does not guarantee child safety, calm water or lifeguard coverage.
CLOTHING-OPTIONAL
Nudity is officially permitted in all or part of the destination. Read the current notice before taking children.
NUDITY ADVISORY
Nudity may be encountered in a remote area even without an official clothing-optional designation.
Cannon Beach at John Pennekamp State Park
Monroe County, Florida
The snorkeling beach at America's first undersea park, at 102601 Overseas Highway in Key Largo. Artifacts from a 1715 Spanish shipwreck lie in the water about 100 feet out, put there to be looked at. The park is open 8 a.m. until sunset, 365 days a year, and entry is $8 a vehicle plus 50 cents a person. Glass-bottom boat trips, a visitor center with saltwater aquariums, camping, restrooms, showers and a cafe.
Harry Harris Park Beach
Monroe County, Florida
A 21-acre county park at the end of East Beach Road in Tavernier, with a protected swimming area, a boat ramp, two baseball fields, a basketball court, pavilions, grills and a playground. Open from sunrise until half an hour after sunset, with the athletic fields open until 10 p.m. Monroe County residents get in free. Everyone else pays $15 a vehicle, and $40 more to launch a boat on a weekend or $60 on a holiday or during the July lobster mini-season.
Founders Park Beach
Monroe County, Florida
A shallow beach on Florida Bay inside a 45-acre park at 86800 Overseas Highway, open sunrise to sunset. Islamorada residents get in free with a resident card. Everyone else pays $10 for adults and $7 for children and seniors, and $15 and $10 at summer weekends and on holidays. Beyond the beach there is a 50-meter pool, tennis and pickleball courts, a dog park, an amphitheater, restrooms and outdoor showers.
Anne’s Beach
Monroe County, Florida
At mile marker 73.5 on the ocean side of Lower Matecumbe Key, open sunrise to sunset. Three hundred feet of boardwalk runs behind the sand to six pavilions with covered picnic tables, paved parking and public restrooms. The water is shallow and calm, which makes it one of the easier Keys beaches with small children, and the whole thing was rebuilt after Hurricane Irma. Dogs are allowed on a leash. No fishing, no grills and no open flames.
Curry Hammock State Park Beach
Monroe County, Florida
At 56200 Overseas Highway in Marathon, open 8 a.m. until sunset, 365 days a year, for $4.50 on your own or $5.50 for two or more people. The park covers 1,000 acres and is the largest undeveloped parcel between Key Largo and Big Pine Key. The shallow water and steady wind bring kiteboarders, rangers run a kayak tour on Friday mornings at nine, and record numbers of peregrine falcons pass through every fall. Camping, a mile and a half of trail, restrooms and showers.
Coco Plum Beach
Monroe County, Florida
A natural beach beside a wetland at 109 Coco Plum Drive in Marathon, 1.4 miles down the road from the turn, open 7:30 a.m. until dusk. Turtles nest here. There are restrooms and one covered pavilion, and little else.
Sombrero Beach
Monroe County, Florida
At 200 36th Street Ocean in Marathon, open 7 a.m. until dusk every day, and rebuilt in 2001 so that all of it is accessible. Picnic pavilions that can be reserved, playgrounds, volleyball courts, restrooms and showers. Loggerhead turtles nest here from April to October and the city marks the nests, which take up less than a tenth of the beach. No parking for recreational vehicles or buses.
Bahia Honda State Park Beach
Monroe County, Florida
At 36850 Overseas Highway on Big Pine Key, open 8 a.m. until sunset, 365 days a year, for $8 a vehicle plus a 50-cent county charge a head. Three beaches, Sandspur, Loggerhead and Calusa, with the old Bahia Honda bridge standing behind them. Camping, cabins, a marina and a boat ramp, kayaks and snorkeling gear for rent, boat trips out to the reef, a concession, restrooms and showers.
Smathers Beach
Monroe County, Florida
The largest public beach in Key West, about half a mile of sand on the island's south side along State Road A1A, and about 150,000 people a year come to it. Volleyball nets, jet ski rentals, restrooms and showers. Parking is $5 an hour, Monday to Saturday from 8 a.m. to midnight, and nobody parks there overnight.
Higgs Beach
Monroe County, Florida
A Monroe County park in Key West, and the one set up for people who need help getting onto the sand: beach wheelchairs, a mobility mat and an accessible beach area. Seventeen barbecues, fourteen picnic tables, six tiki huts, ten wooden umbrellas, two pavilions, showers and restrooms. Chairs and umbrellas can be rented, sailboats too, and there is a restaurant on site.
Fort Zachary Taylor State Park Beach
Monroe County, Florida
Florida's southernmost state park beach, open 8 a.m. until sundown, 365 days a year, for $6 a vehicle plus 50 cents a head. Sand and pebbles over a rocky bottom, so water shoes help, and the shipping channel alongside keeps the water clear. Some of the best snorkeling from a beach anywhere in the Keys, with gear for rent on the sand. No lifeguards. Free beach wheelchairs, two showers, restrooms and a cafe open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Civil War fort behind it closes at five.
South Beach Key West
Monroe County, Florida
At the ocean end of Duval Street, open sunrise to sunset, within walking distance of the shops and restaurants at the bottom of the street. The water is shallow and the Emma Carrero Cates Pier runs out from the sand. Tennessee Williams is said to have come here for a swim almost every day he lived in Key West.
Rest Beach
Monroe County, Florida
A beachfront park at White Street and Atlantic Boulevard, open 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day. Soft sand for wading and looking for shells, picnic tables and plenty of shade. The Key West AIDS Memorial stands a few yards away at the entrance to the Edward B. Knight Pier.
Dry Tortugas National Park Beach
Monroe County, Florida
About 70 miles west of Key West and reached only by ferry, seaplane or private boat. Entry is $15 a person and covers seven days in a row, and nobody under 16 pays. The beach is on Garden Key in front of Fort Jefferson, with a primitive campground a short walk from the dock at $15 a night for a site. Nothing is sold out there: the food, the water and the gear all come with you, and all of it goes home with you.
Official planning desk
Check current public information before making the move.
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Florida housing resourcesState resources for homebuyers, renters and local assistance programs.
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