2 Fast 2 Furious | Pigeon Key and the Seven Mile Bridge — Two Lanes Over Open Water

South of Miami the film changes register. The run down US 1 puts the cars on the Overseas Highway, and the stretch that sells it is the Seven Mile Bridge: two lanes of concrete laid across open water between Knight's Key and Little Duck Key, with the ruined 1912 railroad bridge running parallel a few metres to the side. Halfway across, tucked beneath the old span, sits Pigeon Key — five acres of coral rock that housed the men who built Henry Flagler's railroad out to Key West.

You cannot drive onto Pigeon Key, and that is what makes it worth the detour. You walk the old bridge or take the ferry from the visitor centre in Marathon, and the island is quiet in a way nothing else in this movie is. Wooden bunkhouses from 1912 still stand under the palms, paint blistered, floors sloping.

From the shoreline you look up at the underside of the old span and out along the new one, watching traffic cross seven miles of water on a strip barely wider than the vehicles using it. Stay until the light drops. The bridge becomes one lit line over the Gulf, and the last act of the film finally makes geographic sense.

Photo: Pigeon Key from the Seven Mile Bridge, State Archives of Florida / Florida Memory (Flickr Commons, no known copyright restrictions).