No Name Key is an island in the lower

Florida Keys The Florida Keys are a 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 Miami, and e ...

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 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. 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 Rail ...

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 Monroe County may refer to seventeen counties in the United States, all named for James Monroe: * Monroe County, Alabama *Monroe County, Arkansas * Monroe County, Florida * Monroe County, Georgia *Monroe County, Illinois *Monroe County, Indian ...

and the No Name Key property owners. In May 2013, the

Florida Public Service Commission The Florida Public Service Commission (FPSC) regulates investor-owned electric, natural gas, and water and wastewater utilities. The FPSC facilitates competitive markets in the telecommunications industry, has authority over intercarrier disputes ...

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 from ...

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 The Key deer (''Odocoileus virginianus clavium'') is an endangered deer that lives only in the Florida Keys. It is a subspecies of the white-tailed deer (''O. virginianus''). It is the smallest extant North American deer species. Description Th ...

References

External links

History of No Name Key
{{Authority control Islands of the Florida Keys Islands of Monroe County, Florida Islands of Florida