Oversea Highway to Key West from Lower Matecumbe, FL, 1946

About this postcard

The view looks southwest from Lower Matecumbe along the Oversea Highway, a long concrete viaduct carried over open water toward the lower Florida Keys. The road curves above shallow green flats and blue channels, with the horizon low and empty. The highway opened in 1938 on the bridges and roadbed of Henry Flagler's Florida East Coast Railway Key West Extension, which the 1935 Labor Day hurricane wrecked. It replaced a 20-mile ferry gap and became the only land route to Key West. A sender's note calls it the "ocean sea highway" and points out a one-mile stretch over water.