It's a clear transition point to me. The area around Homestead is farm country, providing year-round produce for Florida and the rest of the country. It also has a new auto racing facility, which was built amid much talk of scandal, influence-peddling and powerful people applying pressure. Carl Hiaasen has followed this story closely. There are two ways into the Keys from Homestead.
Kingfishers also love to sit on the wires, checking things out.
I prefer the road less taken and opt for the Card Sound Road approach to the Keys. The turnoff from Route 1 is just south of Homestead and as soon as you swing off onto it you're in a different world. The narrow two-lane road is lined by closely packed mangroves, the taller trees still showing hurricane damage. Mangroves are linked in my mind with the Keys, I guess because it is in this fragile yet tenacious environment that their life cycle and the part they play in ecology of the region is most apparent. Just before Card Sound a group of nautical squatters have carved a ramshackle community out of bureaucratic cowardice.