Keys History: Humphrey Bogart's Boat & the Deep's Museum

Tucked into a strip mall on Islamorada's US-1 (technically at MM 83 in Islamorada but frequently listed under Key Largo area), the History of Diving Museum is one of the most unexpectedly absorbing small museums in Florida. Its collection traces humanity's 4,500-year effort to breathe underwater — from ancient Greek sponge divers and Renaissance diving bells to the revolutionary Aqua-Lung developed by Jacques Cousteau and Émile Gagnan in 1943 that launched modern recreational scuba diving. The museum holds the world's largest collection of antique diving helmets (over 500 examples from 30 countries), a recreation of a 1940s hard-hat dive, an original Aqua-Lung prototype, and exhibits on the Navy's SEALAB program, the first saturation diving experiments in the 1960s. Allow 90 minutes — you will spend more time here than you expect.

Docked at the Holiday Inn marina in Key Largo is one of cinema's most famous props: the actual African Queen, the 30-foot steam-powered boat used in John Huston's 1951 film starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. The film won Bogart his only Academy Award. The boat was built in 1912 in England and served as a working vessel on Lake Albert in what is now Uganda before being used in the film. After decades of various owners and a period of near-total disrepair, it was restored in the 1980s and has been based in Key Largo since 1982. Visitors can board the boat for photo opportunities when not in use, and the marina offers short narrated cruises aboard the African Queen — a genuinely surreal experience, chugging through the mangroves of Key Largo on a 114-year-old steam launch made famous by two of Hollywood's greatest stars.

John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park — established in 1963 as the first undersea park in the United States — protects 70 nautical square miles of coral reef, seagrass beds, and mangrove swamps. Named after Miami Herald editor John Pennekamp, who campaigned for its creation, the park's visitor center contains a 30,000-gallon coral reef aquarium with live fish, coral, and marine life from the adjacent reef system. The park offers glass-bottom boat tours over the living reef and the famous Christ of the Abyss statue — a bronze figure of Christ with arms raised toward the surface, placed 25 feet underwater in 1965 as a replica of a Genoese original. Even just the visitor center aquarium is worth an hour.

Established in 1946 in the lagoon created when Overseas Highway construction blasted through a Keys hammock, Theater of the Sea is the oldest marine mammal facility in the world — predating SeaWorld by 18 years and predating most public aquariums by decades. It operates in a remarkably natural setting: the lagoon is a genuine saltwater inlet connected to the Florida Straits, not an artificial tank, and the resident dolphins, sea lions, and sea turtles inhabit a space that still feels like the Keys backcountry. The facility has never expanded beyond its original footprint; unlike modern marine parks, it retains the intimate, slightly ramshackle character of mid-20th century Florida. Programs allow swimming with dolphins and sea lions in the natural lagoon — an experience that has barely changed since Harry Regal opened the park the year after World War II ended.

A waterfront craft brewery on Florida Bay in Islamorada with a large outdoor deck, tropical-influenced beers (mango IPA, Key lime wheat, coconut porter), and a view of the backcountry that pairs well with an afternoon pint. The laid-back Keys attitude that you can actually still find, if you look for it.