Three Islandia Maps That Will Blow Your Mind
If it seems like the City of Islandia and its overseas causeway were a pipe dream, these plat maps prove otherwise
The Key Biscayne to Key Largo Causeway would have connected Miami Beach to Fisher Island to Virginia Key to the City of Islandia and the Florida Keys beyond, creating an entirely different coastal universe and perhaps an alternate reality wherein coastal South Florida itself was less impressive. Don’t believe me? Dig it.
Perhaps these lines from Philip Larkin’s poem, “Bridge for the Living”, rang in the hearts of Miami developers:
Reaching for the world, as our lives do,
As all lives do, reaching that we may give
The best of what we are and hold as true:
Always it is by bridges that we live.
This would have held most true for Islandia.
Imagine Elliott Key: the centerpiece of Biscayne National Park, a recreational boater’s paradise, and a mostly mosquito-ridden mangrove habitat. It was also the most important portion of a planned overseas causeway between Key Biscayne and Key Largo. You might say it was never a possibility, but friends: it was platted. This map approved by County planning and zoning.
And once we have a causeway on a serene island in the middle of the ocean, what happens next? If you guessed “plat a subdivision” then you are correct. Two, to be sure. One on Elliott Key. It was called Elliott Shores. It was actually platted well before (1927) the Causeway was approved but it was platted in anticipation of approval. When you get Here’s what your looked like:
Imagine it’s just before Labor Day of 1935. You are blasting down Elliott Avenue in a Buick Roadster which you shipped from the mainland on a barge. You have 50 lbs of Mahi sitting on palm fronds in the backseat. There is rum, likely left by the pirate Black Caesar, which you discovered while clearing land for the cistern you are planning. Life is good. You get home though and the barometer has dropped. A massive hurricane is coming.
Meanwhile to the north, on Sands Key, the residents of a place called Angler’s Retreat hunker down. They have already boldly defied nature by platting their homes and roads. What’s a storm?
Well, it was all a nice dream anyway.
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