No Name Key is an island in the lower
Florida Keys
The Florida Keys are a coral island, coral cay archipelago located off the southern coast of Florida, forming the southernmost part of the continental United States. They begin at the southeastern coast of the Florida peninsula, about south of ...
in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...
. It is from
US 1
U.S. Route 1 or U.S. Highway 1 (US 1) is a major north–south United States Numbered Highway that serves the East Coast of the United States. It runs from Key West, Florida, north to Fort Kent, Maine, at the Canadian border, making i ...
and sparsely populated, with only 43 homes. It is only about in comparison to its larger neighbor,
Big Pine Key, which lies about half a mile (800 m) to its west. It is accessible by a concrete bridge from Big Pine Key and was the terminus of a car ferry that existed before the present
Overseas Highway
The Overseas Highway is a highway carrying U.S. Route 1 (US 1) through the Florida Keys to Key West. Large parts of it were built on the former right-of-way of the Overseas Railroad, the Key West Extension of the Florida East Coast R ...
was built on the remains of Flagler's
Overseas Railroad
The Overseas Railroad (also known as Florida Overseas Railroad, the Overseas Extension, and Flagler's Folly) was an extension of the Florida East Coast Railway to Key West, a city located beyond the end of the Florida peninsula. Work on the line ...
.
Electricity
No Name Key was known for not being connected to the commercial power grid, for a local county ordinance prohibited this. Residents mostly used a combination of solar energy and diesel or gas generators.
This prohibition of commercial electricity sparked a lawsuit between
Monroe County and the No Name Key property owners. In May 2013, the
Florida Public Service Commission exercised its jurisdiction over public utilities and issued Order PSC-13-0207-PAA-EM declaring the residents had a right to commercial electrical power. A week later, the circuit court issued a writ of
mandamus
(; ) is a judicial remedy in the form of an order from a court to any government, subordinate court, corporation, or public authority, to do (or forbear from doing) some specific act which that body is obliged under law to do (or refrain fr ...
ordering the county to issue the permits necessary to connect the residential homes to the commercial electric grid.
On May 29, 2013, the decades-long battle over electricity ended as the residents began connecting to the commercial electric grid.
Flora and fauna
Native fauna of No Name Key include the endangered
Key deer.
References
External links
History of No Name Key
{{Authority control
Islands of the Florida Keys
Islands of Monroe County, Florida
Islands of Florida