"Mangrove Heaven" Boot Key by grandmaR

Looking down through drawbridge

Unlike Key West or the other communities along the Florida keys, Marathon is a city but it is not also the name of the key that it is on. The two main keys in the Marathon area are Vaca Key and Boot Key. (Marathon was named by one of Flagler's railroad builders who said that building the railroad was 'a Marathon')

Boot Key is mainly a dense mangrove swamp. If you know anything about mangroves, you know that it is impossible to get through a thicket of them. Since the mangrove areas are protected, they can't be cut down and the land can't be filled and built upon. So Boot Key is a privately owned wilderness. It has one road which goes out to Radio Marti, and then to the end of the key towards Sister's Creek.

Boot Key Harbor from the bridge

The only way to get to the Key is via a drawbridge. The drawbridge is over one of the entrances to the Key. According to a conversation I had with the bridge tender, the bridge is required by the Coast Guard to be manned 24 hours because it is part of the ICW (and possibly also because Radio Marti is in operation 24/7). But normally it is only opened for boat traffic from 6 am to 10 pm. Unlike many other Florida bridges, it opens on demand. There is so little vehicular traffic on the bridge that there's never anyone to hold up for the opening.

• Pros:Undeveloped
• Cons:Nothing there
• In a nutshell:A bridge to nowhere